Visma | Lease a Bike dared to risk by attacking Tadej Pogacar already 80 kilometers from the finish, but the yellow jersey did not crumble. In fact, the Slovenian showed no sign of weakness on either Col de la Madeleine or Col de la Loze. And then towards the top he once again accelerated away from Jonas Vingegaard to add another 11 seconds to his overall lead.
“We tried everything, but Tadej was the strongest again,” concluded sports director Grischa Niermann in a post-race interview with NOS. “If you have to gain 4 and a half minutes back, you can’t wait for the final climb. We knew the chance of Pogacar breaking on the Madeleine was slim, but we had to try.”
It was a counter-intuitive move even for the German DS who did not really expect the Slovenian to give up this easily anyways. In fact, it seemed like he had the whole day completely under control. “If I’m honest, I never thought for a moment that he would break, but we don’t stop after two minutes if we have a plan. It was a fair race, and Tadej ultimately proved to be just a little bit stronger than Jonas.”
After Madeleine, the front group entered into a stalemate with nobody to pace down the valley to the foot of Col de la Loze. “Nobody wanted to ride, and we weren’t going to continue with Pogacar on our wheel,” Niermann explained. “We felt it was better for that group to come back.”
“That climb wasn’t suitable for an attack, except in the final 5.5 kilometers. It was clear Jonas would still try. We tried everything, but the strongest rider is in yellow. We have to live with that. We’ll try again tomorrow, but yeah… chances are the result will be the same,”