Tadej Pogacar stormed to victory on the fourth stage of Paris-Nice on Wednesday, laying down a marker against his great rival Jonas Vingegaard at the first summit stage finish of the European season.
The win took the Slovenian to the top of the general classification, even though he admitted afterwards that he had not anticipated taking the lead on Wednesday. “It was not in my mind to take yellow today, but you don’t say no to yellow, and it’s nice to be back,” Pogacar said.
With two flat stages and a team time-trial behind them, the 164.7km fourth stage – with a final climb of 6.8km at an average gradient of 7% – seemed set to come down to a battle between the Slovenian Pogacar, the 2020 and 2021 Tour de France winner, and Vingegaard, the Dane who took the yellow jersey in 2022.
And indeed as the road sloped up towards La Loge des Gardes, Vingegaard attacked with just over 4km to the line. Pogacar was quick to close the brief gap and the pair eased off their attack to drift back to the leading group. That allowed France’s David Gaudu to break away himself and threaten to upset the odds.
Pogacar, though, was back on the offensive with just over 2km to ride, rapidly closing down Gaudu and creating a gap to Vingegaard which the Jumbo-Visma rider could not close.
Pogacar shook Gaudu from his wheel in the final metres, winning by 10 seconds and crucially finishing 43 seconds ahead of Vingegaard, who eventually finished sixth behind Gino Mader, Aurélien Paret-Peintre and Kévin Vauquelin.
The result took Pogacar to the top of the GC standings, with Gaudu second and Vingegaard third. Simon Yates sits fourth.
“It was chaos all day,” said Pogacar. “I’m a little bit surprised [that Vingegaard’s challenge behind him failed]. In the end it was really tough and he just missed a little bit to catch me and cracked a little bit.”
