Stage 20: Lacapelle-Marival to Rocamadour
Date: July 23, 2022
Distance: 40.7km
Stage timing: 13:05 – 17:49 CEST
Stage type: Individual time trial
The enduring image of Tadej Pogačar’s late, late upset on La Planche des Belles Filles two years ago in the final time trial of the Tour de France was of Tom Dumoulin and Wout van Aert watching in quiet disbelief on the big screen as their Jumbo-Visma teammate Primoz Roglič lost a race that already seemed won.
That incredulity was later given a voice in the team’s own documentary of that Tour, Code Yellow, in which Dumoulin likened Pogačar’s riding style to “a miner.” Earlier this week, when Jumbo-Visma were already defending a hefty lead over Pogačar, Van Aert reiterated the lesson of 2020. “We paid a price to learn that the yellow jersey isn’t yours until you bring it to the Champs-Élysées,” he said.
The man wearing the yellow jersey this time, however, doesn’t carry the same scarring from La Planche des Belles Filles as some of his teammates. In September 2020, Jonas Vingegaard wasn’t even part of Jumbo-Visma’s Tour selection and that final weekend, he had altogether more important matters on his mind than a mere bike race.
“I was in the hospital. My daughter had just been born, so I was watching from the hospital,” Vingegaard told reporters on Friday evening, promptly downplaying the idea that Jumbo-Visma had developed a complex about facing Pogačar in the final time trial of the Tour. “I wouldn’t say it’s something we talk a lot about. For me, tomorrow I’ll just really do everything I can to keep this beautiful jersey.”
It helps, of course, that the most pressing lesson of 2020 has already been resoundingly applied. Two years ago, a dominant Jumbo-Visma brought comparisons with the ‘Total Football’ employed by the Dutch squad of the 1970s to an unfortunate extreme. Like Johan Cruyff et al in the 1974 World Cup final, they appeared so intent on humiliating their opponents that they neglected to win the match. Roglič had only a 57-second advantage to show for their superiority across three weeks before the final time trial, and it didn’t suffice.
This time around, Vingegaard has a rather more comfortable buffer of 3:26 over Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) after Jumbo-Visma took care to distance the defending champion definitively on the final mountaintop finish at Hautacam on Thursday. Vingegaard, like…
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