IBIS BUDGET WITH RATS, France — Zak Dempster stood at the bottom of the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe bus steps, still in his team polo, and tried to explain a bike race that stopped resembling the one his team planned for about eight kilometers from the top. "This morning, we mainly set out with the idea of securing Remco's place on the podium," he said. Patxi Vila, one of his fellow director sportifs, was a few feet away telling a different knot of reporters the same story in different words: when Pogačar is in the race and there's a climb like this to finish, you don't plan for the win, you plan for damage control. "You're just waiting for him to drop a bomb on you," Dempster said.
There is a calculation every rider left in this race has to make, whether they say it out loud or not, that centers on a single reality: Pogačar is almost always stronger. That much isn't up for debate anymore. What's still open, still negotiated fresh on every summit finish, is how long you're willing to sit on his wheel before it bankrupts you. How long do you hold on? Keep his pace a little longer than feels sustainable, and Pogačar can take you up and away from your other rivals; wait a bit longer than that and you may crack so hard the rest come right back past. It’s a gamble that Pogačar’s strength forces upon other GC contenders, particularly now that Jonas Vingegaard is out, every day that the road tilts upward. On Sunday, Evenepoel took the bet.
Somewhere above us, on a mountain none of us climbed, Evenepoel just won a stage of the Tour de France that both of the men paid to make decisions about him insist they didn't see coming.
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