Tour de France Stage 16: Shocking Vingegaard Stands Alone

Overnight leader Jonas Vingegaard of Jumbo Visma turned the heretofore friendly neck-and-neck Tour de France rivalry with UAE’s Tadej Pogačar into a rout with a time trial performance of the ages on stage 16. Vingegaard, taking risks through the early turns and crushing the final climb, stormed his way to a shockingly large stage victory in Combloux, France, by 1.38. The Dane now leads the Tour de France over Pogačar by 1.48 with two major climbing stages remaining before he can claim a successful defense of his victory last year.

Vingegaard did everything to the max. In the first portion, a fast and curvy section, it was Vingegaard taking the risks to the limit, and he had close to 30 seconds over his Slovenian rival before the uphill sections began. Pogačar for his part smashed all of the day’s standards along the way, taking the stage lead from Vingegaard’s teammate Wout Van Aert for a few seconds, putting on a great display of his own. But what Vingegaard was doing behind him was truly special. Vingegaard, sticking with his TT bike rather than changing as Pogačar did for the last uphill part, added another minute to his advantage on the stage and really set himself apart on the day. He also notched his first stage win of the 2023 Tour, a key accomplishment for any would-be overall winner, as well as his first-ever time trial win in the Grand Boucle.

Behind the top two the field was obliterated. Not that they had any hope of catching up, but the likes of Adam Yates, Carlos Rodriguez, and the rest are now all barely within nine minutes of the lead, or worse. Pello Bilbao and Simon Yates were the only two GC contenders within three minutes of Vingegaard on the day. There are two champions here, and the rest are all distant “contenders” battling only amongst each other for the scraps.

Tomorrow’s stage to Courchevel will be the highest mountain stage of the Tour and a major challenge to the top two coming off this painful effort. The battle between them is not over, but it changed shape rather drastically.

Stage

1. VINGEGAARD Jonas, Jumbo-Visma, 32:36
2. POGAČAR Tadej, UAE Team Emirates, at 1:38
3. VAN AERT Wout, Jumbo-Visma, at 2:51
4. BILBAO Pello, Bahrain – Victorious, at 2:55
5. YATES Simon, Team Jayco AlUla, 2:58
6. CAVAGNA Rémi, Soudal – Quick Step, 3:06
7. YATES Adam, UAE Team Emirates, 3:12