Jonas Vingegaard<\/a>. The Dane was many
\npeople\u2019s favourite to wear the yellow jersey at the end of the stage, as he had
\ncomfortably beaten Pogacar when the Slovenian struggled in the Dauphine\u2019s time
\ntrial. But, yesterday the tables were turned.<\/p>\n\u201cHe finished 13th on the stage\u2026 a minute and 21 behind. It
\njust never looked like he was having a great ride,\u201d Armstrong said. \u201cYou have
\nto look at this performance and say something\u2019s up.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was speculation that Vingegaard may be paying the
\nprice for repeated high-intensity efforts earlier in the race. The day before,
\non stage 4, the Dane said that he had achieved his best one minute power output
\non the day\u2019s final explosive climb. \u201cThat might have something to do with it,\u201d
\nsaid Wiggins. \u201cPerhaps the damage you do from those type of efforts\u2026 you\u2019ve got
\nto ride 33\u201336 minutes on the threshold.\u201d<\/p>\n
The group also questioned whether Team Visma | Lease a Bike
\nwould continue to back Vingegaard as sole leader.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s on the back foot now\u2026 Matteo Jorgenson is right on his
\nheels,\u201d Wiggins said. \u201cVisma really have to think about a two-pronged attack.\u201d<\/p>\n
Armstrong echoed the point: \u201cMatteo can climb. Matteo has
\nexperience. Matteo is on the way up. They\u2019re going to have to look at alternate
\nsolutions now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Pogacar again left little doubt about his form,
\nand incredibly was just 16 seconds behind Evenepoel in the time trial. \u201cWe\u2019re
\nrunning out of superlatives for this guy,\u201d Wiggins said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to see
\nanyone dislodging him over the next two and a half weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking ahead, Stage 6 was flagged as deceptively brutal,
\nwith plenty of climbing and an excellent finish for the puncheurs. This could
\nbe bad news for Vingegaard if he is still suffering, but good news for fans who
\nwant to see Pogacar and Mathieu van der Poel battle again.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou open it up\u2026 and think, \u2018Oh lord,\u2019\u201d Armstrong said. \u201cIt
\nlooks like a saw blade.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was debate over whether UAE would try to control the
\nrace or let the breakaway go. \u201cI\u2019d be really surprised if they put UAE on the
\nfront to control that,\u201d Hincapie said. \u201cBut someone always steps forward\u2026
\nsomeone always ends up working.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Remco’s ability to pull time back late in the stage, after being down at earlier splits, impressed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-254965","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114832068081930413","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}