After two straight days of breakaway success at the Tour de France, you might have thought that Tadej Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates were starting to feel more generous to the opportunists. You would have been wrong.
The race leader showed no mercy on the Tour peloton on Friday, attacking his GC rivals midway up the Isola 2000 climb and then chasing down the poor souls up the road who thought they had a chance to win the day. If this were a Greek tragedy, this might have been the moment where the hero’s hubris led to his downfall – but Pogačar’s wings are impervious to the sun’s heat this year.
The last of the day’s breakaway survivors, Matteo Jorgenson of Visma-Lease a Bike, had enjoyed a gap of about three minutes back to Pogačar and Co. with 10 km to go, but he could not stave off the inevitable as Pogačar sailed past him with 2 km to go. In the end, the Slovenian superstar took his fourth win of this year’s Tour at the line.
For much of the stage, the focus had been on the potential for Jorgenson’s Visma teammate Jonas Vingegaard to roll the dice on an attack that might put pressure on Pogačar. Instead, Pogačar laid waste to the entire Tour field.
“We were setting a good pace on the [Cime de la] Bonette, that Jonas would maybe try on Bonette was my initial thought,” Pogačar said. “Then we saw that they were riding super fast in the front, so I think their main goal was to take the stage but … I took that.”
The rider in yellow could not resist a little chuckle as he considered what he had just done.
In years past, high-mountain stage wins, especially late in the Tour, have frequently been the province of the breakaway riders as the GC favorites have mostly concentrated their attentions on each other. On any given day in the Pyrenees or the Alps, dozens of climbers roll out from the start dreaming of getting into the break and holding on for a career-defining victory on a famous climb.
At both the Giro d’Italia earlier this year and at this Tour too, however, it hasn’t really been up to those riders whether their dreams have a chance to come true. Instead, it has been up to one man and his team.
Pogačar and UAE have been unflinching in their quest for stage victories at the expense of those in the break. In the Giro, Pogačar had a lead of 3:41 to second-placed Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) when he stormed to uphill-finish wins on stages 15 and 16, mowing through the breakaways to further pad his cushion. Not done, he also took stage 20 with a searing attack on Monte Grappa that saw him go clear with 34 km to go and finish more than two minutes ahead of his closest chaser.
At the Tour, Pogačar steamrolled those up the road on back-to-back days as he climbed to victory on stages 14 and 15 in the Pyrenees. Mercifully, Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) was allowed his moment in the sun on stage 17 despite the mountains on the profile, and Victor Campenaerts (Lotto Dstny) won a much less mountainous stage 18, but it turned out that Pogačar was not finished in his dogged pursuit of stage glory.
On Friday’s stage 19, UAE set a torrid tempo on la Bonette, bringing the gap to the leading breakaway riders down under four minutes by the start of the final climb to Isola 2000. Out front, however, things still looked promising. Wilco Kelderman (Visma-Lease a Bike) drove a hard pace to set up Jorgenson to attack, and the American did just that with 12 km to go, leaving Carapaz and Simon Yates (Jayco-AlUla) in chase mode. Jorgsenson’s initial surge was a good one and it immediately propelled him to a big gap over his breakaway companions. For the next few minutes, he looked to have a solid shot at the stage win.
Then, in the GC group a few minutes behind the break, Pogačar put in his attack. Neither Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) nor Vingegaard could follow his move, and he set about picking his way through the remnants of the break. As he soared up the mountain, the inevitability started to set in.
He said later that he had actually started to tire as he closed in on Jorgenson, but Pogačar’s killer instinct is not so easily tamed. With his prey in view, he found the resolve to finish the job. Jorgenson didn’t look back until just as the catch was made, but he knew what was coming. “When I heard that Pogačar was getting closer in the finale, I could already feel the pressure,” he said. “I kept fighting for it with every fiber of my body. Unfortunately that was not rewarded today.” But he did make the Slovenian work for it.
“I was a little bit empty in the last two kilometers,” Pogačar said. “When I caught Carapaz and Simon Yates, I was already on the limit, but then when I saw that Matteo was losing a bit, I tried to push through.”
He did just that, leaving everyone watching to wonder what must have been going through Jorgenson’s mind as he watched Pogačar ride by, dashing his hopes for a maiden Tour stage win for the second year in a row after last year’s near-miss on Puy de Dôme. When the dust settled, Pogačar had secured his 15th career Tour stage win – 20 to go to match Mark Cavendish.
After dominating the stage and leaving no doubt as to his status at the Tour’s best rider, Pogačar was at least a gracious winner.
“He was really strong today,” he said of Jorgenson. “Chapeau to Matteo and all the breakaway guys today.”
What’s more, he might just let someone else have a chance on Saturday, the final mass-start stage of the Tour before the closing time trial. Perhaps that’s because he has started to take pity on the rest of the pro peloton, or perhaps because it’s just that he wants to relax a little bit, especially considering that he’ll be a favorite for that TT and a possible fifth Tour stage win to close things out.
“Tomorrow, I must say that I can just enjoy the stage and let the breakaway go,” he said.
Time will tell if that’s true, of course, but now that Pogačar has told the world that he plans to give someone else a turn on Saturday, you better believe that the fight to get into the last breakaway of the 2024 Tour will be a fierce one.
What did you think of this story?