Tadej Pogacar climbed to a convincing victory on stage 19 of the Tour de France on Friday, extending his overall lead over defending champion Jonas Vingegaard to close on a historic Tour-Giro double.
With two tough stages remaining, the 2020 and 2021 Tour de France champion Pogacar leads Vingegaard by 5min 3sec. Remco Evenepoel remains third, now at 7min 1sec.
Pogacar is also two stages away from a Giro d'Italia and Tour de France double, which would be a first in 26 years.
A dominant and confident Pogacar had promised to attack here on the "Queen" stage with its massive mountains. He came into stage 19 with a 3min 11sec lead over Vingegaard, with Evenepoel at 5min 11sec in third.
"He set a terrible pace, he was just stronger," said Belgian Evenepoel. "I was hoping Vingegaard might wilt, but he did well."
The 2022 and 2023 champion Vingegaard's sports director Grischa Niermann effectively accepted defeat.
"Jonas did an amazing job again today," he said. "Its just that someone was stronger than him, and that's been the story of this Tour."
A happy Pogacar, who lives in nearby Monaco, celebrated at the line with his girlfriend.
"It helps that I live near here, I've trained here a lot and well, I also had good legs," said Pogacar, who raced sparingly this spring.
"Coming second in the Tour gave me a lot of motivation to get better. This is no chance thing that I'm here."
Heading into Friday Pogacar was careful to wait before celebrating, but was more relaxed ahead of Saturday.
"It's a big gap. Tomorrow I can enjoy the ride on my home roads where I train and just watch out that nothing happens."
Previous weak moments for the Team UAE rider have come at altitude and in hot weather as he let slip the last two Tour de France titles to the Dane Vingegaard.
So the 25-year-old will have been happy riding under overcast skies as the mercury dipped to 18.5 Celsius (65 Fahrenheit).
There was plenty of altitude on the menu however as the pack first crossed the fan-packed Col de la Bonette, a 23km climb at 7 percent average gradient to the dizzying altitude of 2,800m.
The final climb to Isola 2000 ski resort is hardly less crushing and Pogacar attacked with a jaw-dropping 10km to go.
He left his rivals trailing and chewed up the attackers in quick succession.
Matteo Jorgenson ended up second on the stage at 21sec. Simon Yates, who had led much of the way, dropped to third at 40sec. Richard Carapaz was fourth at 1min 11sec and Evenepoel fifth with Vingegaard on his wheel.
Ecuador's Carapaz took over the lead of the polka dot climb points standings, and after winning a stage and donning the overall leader's yellow jersey in Bologna, has had a fine campaign.
Vingegaard won his two titles by tailing Pogacar doggedly, wearing the more attack-minded rider down.
But on Friday, Vingegaard looked haggard as he slumped over his handlebars at the Isola ski resort.
The 27-year-old suffered a life-threatening accident at the Tour of the Basque Country in March, and has raced with courage under the circumstances.
Saturday is also mountainous with two climbs and a downhill finale.
The final stage, which could shake up the standings even more, is a 34km individual time trial from Monaco to Nice.
Eritrean break-out star Biniam Girmay retained the green sprint jersey ahead of Jasper Philipsen as the escape group took the intermediate sprint points way ahead of the peloton.
Girmay and Philipsen have both won three stages on this year's race, while Pogacar has four.
