Now what? Thaddeus Pogacar threw everything at Jonas Wingegaard on stage 17 of the Tour de France, the second race in the Pyrenees, but four bonus seconds were scant return for his and his depleted team’s efforts en route to Peyragüdes.
True, Pogacar overtook Vingegaard at the summit to claim his third stage win of his Tour, but despite celebrating with his usual vigor upon crossing the line, it was hard to shake the feeling that it was a consolation prize. His path to a third consecutive overall victory remains as difficult now as it was before the day began. He remains second overall, 2:18 behind Vingegaard.
“Tomorrow is a more difficult day and we can try again tomorrow,” insisted Pogachar after the podium ceremony, but he knows he has almost exhausted his reserve for tomorrow on this lap. Thursday’s withdrawal over the Col d’Aubisque, Col de Spandelles and Hautacam represents his last chance to bend this race to his will.
Pogacar will take solace in the fact that for the first time in this competition his UAE Team Emirates squad was stronger than Vingegaard’s Jumbo-Visma cohort, and on a day when they were reduced to just four riders. After an ill Marc Soler finished outside the time limit on Tuesday, the injured Rafal Majka withdrew before the start.
In their absence, an extremely surprising Mikkel Bjerg and a most determined Brandon McNulty edged closer to the finish, shredding the group in the yellow jersey on the penultimate climb of the Col de Val Louron-Azet and leaving Vingegaard bereft of team-mates with almost 25km to go. compete.
However, Pogachar’s main problem on this tour remains unsolvable. Vingegaard parked himself on the Slovenian’s wheel after UAE Team Emirates began their push, and he was still there when McNulty’s relentless pace burned everyone else. McNulty led Pogačar and Vingegaard over the summit of Val Louron-Azet and all the way to Peyragudes before the race’s top two riders sprinted for the stage win.
“I think the fact today is that the mood is higher even though we’re down to four,” Pogachar said. “I think it’s changed the dynamic now. We are really optimistic and motivated for tomorrow’s stage. Brandon and Mikel were really nice. We can try really hard and try to turn back time. Today we saw that we are stronger.”
Hautacam
Brandon McNulty leads Pogacar and Vingegaard on the climb of Peyragudes (Image: Getty Images Sport)
In his televised interviews behind the podium and again in the short stage winners’ press conference, Pogacar repeatedly returned to two themes, namely the strength of his team and his confidence ahead of the third and most demanding part of the triptych of the Pyrenees stages on Thursday. .
“It wasn’t just Brandon, it was Mikel and Hirschi. Mikel rode like a mountaineer today. He was setting such a good pace on the climbs, it was amazing,” said Pogachar. “I felt so good at that pace, I felt confident and I know he felt confident too. Brandon did an amazing job, he was so good today.
“We’ve had so much bad luck in recent days, there was always something wrong. I think if everything was normal we would be the strongest team every day, but these things happen in cycling. Tomorrow we will give it our all.”
But while Bjerg and McNulty outdid themselves on Wednesday, Pogačar again failed to put Vingegaard in any real trouble. Before the final sprint, Pogacar’s only acceleration came in the final meters of the Hourquette d’Anzican. It was hard to tell whether Pogachar was chasing the King of the Mountain points or trying to make Vingegore nervous before the descent, but it suggested a lack of confidence in his own ability to take off the yellow jersey on the final climb.
So it turned out. Wingegard was as implacable here as he had been on the Alpe d’Huez, at Mende, and on the Moors de Pegure. Even without Sepp Kuss and Wout van Aert by his side on the last two climbs, Vingegaard never appeared in trouble.
“Vingegaard is strong. We knew that. This is not news,” said UAE Team Emirates manager Mauro Giannetti, who knows Thursday’s finale at Hautacam better than most, given his Saunier Duval team’s infamous performance on the climb in 2008 shortly before they exited the race due to Riccardo Riccò’s positive test for EPO.
“You have to be realistic, and that’s an important distinction,” Giannetti said of Pogachar’s deficit. “But in the Tour you have to keep believing until the end. We will need a lot of courage and a lot of things.”
Pogachar, for his part, seemed optimistic about his prospects. “I think he’s playing to be really strong and not crack,” he said. “But I think today if I had Rafal Maika, Marc Soler and George Bennett, as well as Brandon and Mikel, maybe we would have had a harder race and we would have broken Jonas, but tomorrow is another day to try. “
In truth, Pogacar knows that the hypotheses about his depleted team are debatable. The second half of this contest was a straight contest between the two strongest men in the competition and Pogacar has yet to drop Vingegor. It’s that simple and that complicated. “We will try tomorrow because the harder the race, the better,” Pogacar said. “We’ll see tomorrow if there are any weaknesses.
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