Top 2023 Tour de France favourites Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) may be arch-rivals but they both agree that Sunday’s ascent of the Puy de Dôme could mark a new chapter in the race.
Just 25 seconds separate the Slovenian and the Dane after eight stages, which saw Vingegaard gain time on the first day in the Pyrenees, only for Pogačar to strike back on the second.
But the final ascent of stage 9 of the Puy de Dôme, last tackled in 1988 in the Tour de France, may well see those time gaps change.
“For everybody, tomorrow is something new, it’s a special stage and I think it will be super, super hard,” Pogačar predicted after stage 8. “The race will blow again to pieces.”
On a very fast stage on Saturday, Pogačar was very active and close to the front in the final part, a fraught, twisting run-in to the city of Limoges. Pogačar came through unscathed but another top favourite, Simon Yates (Jayco-AIUIa) crashed heavily and lost time while Lotto-Dstny rider Steff Cras, 13th in the GC, abandoned. Pogačar finally claimed a tenth-place stage finish on the day.
“It was not an easy finish, especially because it was so hot all day, a bit chaotic,” Pogačar recounted. “In the final, l I think because of the tired legs I could be more in the front, Matteo [Trentin] did a super good job to bring me in the front.”
“I tried to sprint, but now I don’t have the sprinting legs.”
Stage 9, starting in Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, the home town of the late French cycling great Raymond Poulidor, has a very different kind of finale. The stage’s 3,441 metres of vertical climbing do not make it the hardest of the 2023 Tour, but the 12.6-kilometre ascent of the Puy de Dôme, with a final four kilometres that never drops below 11%, will surely - as Pogačar predicted - wreak havoc.
Jonas Vingegaard and the Jumbo-Visma camp were equally certain that Puy de Dôme would offer a major upcoming battle. The defending champion and current yellow jersey even smiled a little when he was asked if he knew that the previous winner at Puy de Dôme in 1988, Johnny Weltz, was also Danish and whether he wanted to give their country another victory.
“I knew he won, I cannot remember the year of course but I hope I’m feeling good tomorrow. I have to make a plan for what we’ll do, but it’s not only up to us,” Vingegaard told reporters.
Jumbo-Visma confirmed that above all, “It depends on the legs, how strong Jonas feels he is compared to all the favourites and specially Pogačar,” Arthur Van Dongen, team coach, told Cyclingnews. “When we see some opportunities, we’ll always take a chance.”
As for Pogačar’s ‘comeback’ on stage 6, Van Dongen said, “I wasn’t surprised.”
Van Dongen cited a historical case of a Grand Tour comeback to underline his point, saying “I was also there in the 2018 Giro d’Italia with Tom Dumoulin when a lot of people said Chris Froome was finished,” but in fact, Froome finally clinched the victory almost against all odds.
“But with really great riders like Pogačar, they will always bounce back… there is still a lot coming up and there will be really hard stages in the second and third, a time trial. Really, we’ve only just started.”
