Nothing stops Tadej Pogacar. The Giro d’Italia champion has decisively taken the yellow jersey, two stages ahead of the 2024 Tour de France, after another solo win on stage 19 to Isola 2000.
In another display of sheer power, UAE Team Emirates’ Pogacar crushed his closest rivals, Jonas Vingegaard of Visma Lez-a-Bike and Remco Evenepoel of Soudal Quick-Step, on the high passes of the Mercantour Alps. It was the Slovenian’s 10th Grand Tour stage win of 2024.
This was payback for Pogacar for the humiliations he had suffered in the past at the hands of Vingard and his team. Having been dropped in the Alps in 2022 and 2023, the 25-year-old took savage revenge, extending his lead over the defending champion by 1min 42sec to just over five minutes.
To make matters worse, Pogacar denied his Danish teammate, Mathieu Jorgenson, a first stage win in the Tour de France, catching the American just short of the finish line.
There has been much talk about the Slovenian’s supposed weakness at high altitude, but Pogacar not only managed to survive in the thin air of the Tour’s highest peak, the Cime de la Bonnet, but also moved forward in the overall standings and once again confirmed his superiority over everyone in the group.
In the so-called “queen stage” of the race, which includes three 2,000-metre climbs, defending champion Vingegaard, who in previous years had exposed Pogacar’s weaknesses at the highest altitudes, was expected to flourish.
In the end, the opposite scenario happened, it was the Dane who suffered, and Pogacar who benefited.
On the final climb to Isola 2000, Vingaard went from hero to underdog, stubbornly clinging to Evenepoel’s rear wheel, but he was unable to help Pogacar chase him down, after the race leader attacked him less than nine kilometres from the finish line.
For Vingarde, the towering starting point of the Cime de la Bonnet, the highest point on the Tour and expected to provide a platform for a response, turned out to be a road to nowhere. What was expected to be a high-altitude “death zone” that would test Pogacar’s mettle with a fiery attack from the defending champion, did not materialize.
Four kilometres from the cone-shaped summit, the group of favourites had been whittled down to 18 riders, with Pogacar, Vingegaard and Evenepoel in attendance. But the biggest surprise of the day was that as the competitors climbed into thin air on the 2,802-metre summit of Mount Bonnet, there were no attacks.
With two of his teammates, Jorgenson and Wilco Kelderman, in the six-man lineup, the scene was set for the Dane to make his move, but nothing happened.
The vanguard had been sent out on the road to pave the way for Vingaard’s failed attack, so his team immediately played a second card, that of Jörgenson winning the stage. But showing his desire to succeed, the Slovenian race leader thwarted that attempt too.
Although the race is still on, the Tour has been won. But Pogacar has been warned by two former Grand Tour champions, one of whom was stripped of his prizes, the other whose public image remains intact, for displaying arrogance.
Following the Slovenian’s attack on the Col du Noir on Wednesday, Pogacar was reprimanded by Lance Armstrong.
“It really wasn’t necessary to attack like that. It’s only going to draw more attention to Pogacar. If there’s already speculation about his performance, it certainly won’t help,” Armstrong said on his podcast.
This view was supported by former Giro d’Italia champion Tom Dumoulin, speaking to Dutch broadcaster NOS.
“Pogacar didn’t need to do this at all. He just did it to annoy Vingard,” Dumoulin said, taking issue with other increasingly inflammatory hints of arrogance in the French media.
“There seems to be an element of arrogance. The rivalry between Vingaard and Pogacar has lasted three years, and Pogacar can’t accept defeat for two years in a row,” Dumoulin said. “Now that he’s regained control and has the strength to challenge Vingaard again, he’s thinking, ‘Now, I’ll take you back.’”
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