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It was the weekend that was meant to swing this wonderful edition of the Tour de France in Jonas Vingegaard’s favour. The great Dane had arrived on the start line in Florence with his form and fitness unknowns, the two-time defending champion happy to be alive after a horror crash in the Basque Country in April that had almost cost him his career.
The thought was that if he could get to the Pyrenean peaks in touch with Tadej Pogacar then a third successive maillot jaune might be his. The high, horrible mountain ascents are Vingegaard’s preferred place to prowl, the tough terrain having tilted the Tour in his favour in each of the last two years as Pogacar wilted in the heat.
Having clung faithfully to his foe over the gruelling gravel of Stage 9 and fought back to pip Pogacar on the line on Stage 11, the story looked grimly familiar for the Slovene. The wraith face of the Dane remained ever present on his back wheel, ready to swing the scythe again on the first true mountaintop tests of the race.
Instead, it was Pogacar who struck a potentially fatal double blow with two rides of maturity and majesty. On Saturday, he bode his time before picking his moment to strike, distancing Vinegaard and the rest en route to solo victory at Pla d’Adet. 24 hours later, Visma Lease-a-Bike threw all they had at him, leaving him and Vingegaard all alone. On the pedals the defending champion pushed with all his might before finally chancing a look back to see what damage he had done; in that instant, Pogacar blew past him to take total control.
“I was never worried,” Pogacar said afterwards. “I was at the limit a little bit when Jonas tried to drop me, but I could see that he was also starting to suffer. I saw he didn’t have the legs to go to the top, so I tried with my own.”
“I would never have imagined this kind of outcome after the second week. Usually, I struggle with the heat, but today the team did a good job with cooling down and hydrating.
“I could not imagine a better weekend. Today I was counting down the final kilometres, the final minutes because it was so hard. But it was worth it in the end, I was super happy.”
The narrative painted by some is of a weaker Vingegaard, a wounded champion still battling back to his best after hampered preparation. It is perhaps true in places but Visma Lease-a-Bike’s power data from Sunday showed a career best effort – Pogacar was simply better still.
Only three other men had previously won back-to-back summit finishes at the Tour; the UAE Team Emirates ride has now done it twice. A three-minute lead over Vingegaard should be insurmountable, even with two tough Alpine tests and a final time trial in Nice to negotiate. Survive them and Pogacar will become the first man this century to complete the Giro d’Italia/Tour de France double, a feat henceforth thought unachievable.
Modern cycling has not really known a rider quite like him. From the cobbles and bergs and the spring to the cols and climbs of the summer, Pogacar is a live threat on just about every stage. Complete the job on the Cote d’Azur next Sunday and he will have three Tours and six monuments on his palmares before his 26th birthday. In 2024, he has taken the start line on 46 race days – on 17 occasions, he has crossed the line first, each time with magnanimity.
"I think they’re struggling to understand that Tadej is unbeatable,” Remco Evenepoel, third in the general classification in an impressive Tour debut, said after Stage 15 of Visma Lease-a-Bike’s tactics. “Tadej is on another planet this year. Right now, he is the best in the world. There is absolutely no doubt about that."
It is to the bygone ages of Coppi and Merckx that one has to reach for apt comparison but the glories and ghosts of more recent Tours echo in the present, too. As Pogacar powered up to Plateau de Beille on Sunday, eclipsing his great Dane rival with a performance of panache and poise, it was not just Vingegaard that Pogacar was putting in the shade, but Marco Pantani, too.
The spirit of il pirata has travelled with this Tour. Pantani was the last man to complete the Giro/Tour double that Pogacar is attempting; the opening stage was settled in Rimini, where his complicated life met a tragic end in 2004. The Italian had won at the Plateau de Beille on the race’s first visit to this particular Pyrenean peak in 1998 en route to that Grand Tour double, prancing and dancing on the pedals to leave the rest of an elite field more than 90 seconds behind.
Until Sunday, no-one had managed the ascent faster: Pogacar, Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel now all possess quicker times, the former by nearly four minutes. It is evidence of how far the sport has come in recent years, with training so much more sophisticated, equipment lighter and better, technology ever more influential. And yet Pogacar still stands superior.
“When we arrive on the main street of Nice, then it’s finished,” he said on Sunday, refusing to get ahead of himself. “We can speak about the finish then, not before. We will stay focussed until that moment.”
