Tadej Pogačar and his UAE Team Emirates squad confirmed their dominance of the 2024 Tour de France with yet another stage victory in Isola 2000.
UAE Team Emirates controlled a quality breakaway over the mighty Cime de la Bonette before Pogačar surged across and passed Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike) on the climb to Isola 2000 to win his 15th Tour stage and his tenth Grand Tour stage of the year.
Jorgenson had ridden superbly in the attack, while his team leader Jonas Vingegaard seemed in a battle of survival, unable to try to hurt his Tour de France rival on the Bonette. The American went clear on the climb to the finish but Pogačar closed down a near three-minute gap to catch and pass him with two kilometres to go.
Pogačar took a bow as he won the stage, with Jorgenson finishing 20 seconds behind. Adam Yates (Jayco-AlUla) was at 40 seconds, with Evenepoel and Vingegaard finishing at 1:42.
Pogačar now leads Vingegaard by 5:03, with Evenepoel at an even more distant 7:01. João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates) is a distant fourth at 15:07.
Jorgenson was hugely disappointed. His only consolation was moving up to ninth overall at 22:43, while Carapaz was awarded for his latest attack by taking the polka-dot mountains jersey.
Vingegaard hugged his wife and shed a tear beyond the finish line. Many expected him to go on the attack but he was unable to do so. He seemed happy to have defended his second place.
Pogačar has dominated this year’s Tour de France and held up four fingers beyond the finish line to indicate his four stage wins.
“This Tour was pretty amazing with the stage wins,” he said. “Let's say that I balanced it out. This year, with four stages, compared to last year where I had two. Now the average is three stage wins per Tour. It's pretty crazy and I'm super proud and happy.”
Pogačar feigned fear of the Cime de la Bonette and a possible Vingegaard attack but praised his teammates for controlling the stage as they had planned.
"Now I can confirm the Bonette is a really scary climb,” Pogačar said.
“I'm super happy that I had good legs today. We were here training for a whole month between the Giro and the Tour. We were speaking already in training camp, how we want to race this day, and we did it exactly like we said, to the point where I attacked. It was really 100% perfect.”
“We set a good pace on the Bonette. We thought maybe Jonas would try there. But then when we saw that they were riding super fast in the front, we realised their main goal today was to take the stage. But I took that…”
Pogačar has been ever-aggressive during the Tour but promised to ease up and savour the final mountain stage of the Tour from Nice to the Col de la Couillole on Saturday.
“Tomorrow I can just enjoy the stage,” he said.
“We let the breakaway go, and maybe we enjoy the roads where we were training for a month before the Tour, and where I’ve trained all my career. Let's enjoy tomorrow and hope nothing serious happens.”
How it unfolded
There are arguably several Queen stages of the 2024 Tour de France but with the mighty Cime de la Bonette and a climb to the finish at Isola 2000, stage 19 was always going to be a decisive stage of this year’s race, revealing the true form of everyone in the peloton.
The riders will be based in Nice from tonight and they will race from and to the city during the weekend’s final stages. The Cime de la Bonette offered Vingegaard and Visma-Lease a Bike an opportunity to challenge Pogačar or a chance for the Slovenian to attack once again and tighten his grip on the yellow jersey.
The stage was just 132.8km long but was packed with long Alpine climbs. Every one of the riders at the start in Embrun was worried about the day. There would be a fight for the stage victory, a GC battle and then a race to finish within the time limit. The Tour de France organisers generously extended the time limit by 2% but Mark Cavendish and the other sprinters knew they would have to suffer if they wanted to reach Nice and finish the Tour.
Some 43 minutes after Pogačar's dominant finish, Mark Cavendish finished inside the time limit with two Astana Qazaqstan teammates to also earn some respect and move a step closer to finishing his final Tour de France in Nice. Sadly Arnaud Démare (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) finished a further 12 minutes behind and so was outside the time limit.
Earlier in the day, Israel-Premier Tech's Jake Stewart and Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ) did not start but Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility) did, despite crashing hard on Thursday.
When race director Christian Prudhomme waved his flag from the red car and officially started the stage, Thursday’s winner Victor Campenaerts (Lotto Dstny) was the first to attack in a sign of defiance and extra celebration. He was soon pulled back as other attacks came at 60km/h to try to spark or join the early break.
21 riders soon managed to go clear. Interestingly, Visma-Lease a Bike placed Matteo Jorgenson, Christophe Laporte and Wilco Kelderman in the move, while UAE Team Emirates opted to wait and control. It was the first move of the GC battle chess pieces.
Biniam Girmay and Jasper Philipsen were not in the attack and missed out in the intermediate sprint points, so Girmay took another step towards victory in the green jersey competition if he could survive the final mountain stages.
On the Col de Vars, Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) attacked from the peloton with Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) to try to join the breakaway. The Ecuadorian eventually made it thanks to some help from Neilson Powless who came back from break, but the Colombian suffered and fell back. Simon Yates (Jayco-AlUla) produced a similar move to snatch the last ticket for the attack.
The Col de Var shook out the 23-rider move, with only the best surviving.
Pogačar had plenty of teammates with him, while Vingegaard was soon isolated after Jan Tratnik, Christophe and even Wout Van Aert were dropped. Only Tiesj Benoot and Bart Lemmen were with him but were suffering.
Were Visma riding to set up a Vingegaard attack or for a stage win? It didn’t look like it. We would only know over the Cime de la Bonette and onto the finish. Whatever their plans, UAE were not worried. They put Marc Soler, Nils Politt and Pavel Sivakov on the front to ride a steady, calculated tempo.
Carapaz was the first over the summit of the Carapaz of the Col de Var to score 20 mountain points and so begin a serious pursuit of the polka-dot jersey. The peloton was just 3:30 behind.
After a stunning but fast 30km Alpine descent, the 22.9km Cime de la Bonette started with 80 km left to race.
Cime de la Bonette
The Cime de la Bonette hadn't featured at the Tour for 16 years, since John-Lee Augustyn famously crested the climb in 2008, only to overshoot a hairpin on the descent and slide down the side of the mountain.
The constant 7% grind of the Cime de la Bonette soon began to hurt and Scotland’s Oscar Onley (Dsm-firmenich PostNL) was dropped from the break. Others also crumbled under the pressure of Jorgenson’s and Kelderman’s relentless pace. Soon there were only six left in front: Jorgenson, Kelderman, Carapaz, Yates, Hindley and Rodriguez. It was a quality breakaway of Grand Tour and stage race winners.
None were a threat to Pogačar but UAE refused to let them clear. The riders in white clearly wanted to dominate the race and even set up Pogačar for yet another attack.
Politt did a lot of the work for UAE, going above and beyond his usual Classics prowess to set a steady but painful pace that hurt even the climbers. Felix Gall (Decathlon-AG2R) and David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ) were among those dropped by the relentless Politt pace.
There were only 20 or so riders left in the peloton when Politt eventually moved off the front and made a heart symbol to the television cameras. His work appeared to have put fear in Vingegaard and forced him to stay on the wheels. There would be no sign of an attack from the Dane.
The break pushed on the barren lunar landscapes of the Cime de la Bonette as they rode past and beyond the 2000 metre point. Carapaz surged to the front at the 2802 metre-high summit to take the 40 mountain points and so become the virtual leader in the prestigious race-long competition.
The Pogačar group rode around the exposed Cime de la Bonette summit and then began the long, fast 40km descent, 3:40 down on the attackers.
Jorgenson, Kelderman, Hindley, Carapaz, Rodriguez and Yates pushed on during the spectacular descent and extended their lead to 4:00 but the UAE group again refused to let them go. The gruppetto was timed at over 20:00 but seemed on schedule to survive the day.
Pogačar chose to feed, recover and descend carefully off the Cime de la Bonette, sitting a few metres off the wheel of Sivakov. The speeds hit 100km/h on the sweeping roads as the race headed to the final climb up to Isola 2000.
Isola 2000
The start of the 16km climb was the next change point of the stage. Soler and Sivakov were soon dropped, as Pogačar spoke into his race radio to order the final tactics and a faster pace.
Adam Yates took over on the front and his pace, distancing first Carlos Rodríguez (Ineos Grenadiers), Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek), Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain Victorious) and then Derek Gee (Israel-Premier Tech) as they fought for their top-ten placings.
With 13km to go, Jorgenson knew he had to attack if he wanted a chance to win the stage. The American jumped away and began a solo time trial to try to hold off the remains of the break and surely a surge by Pogačar.
Pogačar made his move with 8.7km to go. He was close to three minutes down on Jorgenson but wanted it all. Vinegeggard initially tried to go with him, and so did Evenepoel, but they soon eased up and began their own battle for second and third place. It was a moment of final acceptance of Pogačar’s dominance.
Jorgenson pushed on desperately but Pogačar was in time trial mode and far fresher. The Slovenian soon closed the gap on Carapaz, then Yates and pushed on.
With two kilometres to go, he caught Jorgenson and dropped him. He was unstoppable and unbeatable. He took a bow as he crossed the line but he was the ruler of the Tour.
Everyone else, and especially Vingegaard, was left to bow their heads in respect.
Results
Results powered by FirstCycling
