{"id":263707,"date":"2025-07-14T08:01:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-14T08:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/263707\/"},"modified":"2025-07-14T08:01:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T08:01:16","slug":"are-tadej-pogacar-and-jonas-vingegaard-still-rivals-this-week-will-tell-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/263707\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard still rivals? This week will tell all"},"content":{"rendered":"

Towards the end of the first week of the 2023 Tour, I stopped for a coffee at the Aire des Pyr\u00e9n\u00e9es deep in southwest France. Off the A64, this is the place to pull in because it is here that Bernard M\u00e9tis\u2019s magnificent sculpture, Le Tour de France dans les Pyr\u00e9n\u00e9es, overlooks the restaurant and forecourt. Reading what is written on the marble plinths beneath Metais\u2019s piece, the obvious conclusion is that the history of the race has been forged from rivalries.<\/p>\n

Louison Bobet and Jean Robic, Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali, Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor, Eddy Merckx and Bernard Th\u00e9venet. Legends, us old timers say, but the greater truth is that the rivalry between Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard is more intense and far more sustained than anything from the past. <\/p>\n

When the two went clear of Oscar Onley and the others on the steep M\u00fbr de Bretagne on Friday, it was the 14th time they had finished first and second on a stage. The score is 11-3 in Pogacar\u2019s favour but the more important statistic is that in the four Tours they have both ridden, the score stands at 2-2. Against these numbers, no historic rivalry comes close. <\/p>\n

Pogacar and Vingegaard at the Tour 2024<\/b>
1st Pogacar
2nd Vingegaard2023<\/b>
1st Vingegaard
2nd Pogacar2022<\/b>
1st Vingegaard
2nd Pogacar2021<\/b>
1st Pogacar
2nd Vingegaard2020<\/b>
1st Pogacar
Vingegaard did not compete<\/p>\n

That they remain the pre-eminent general-classification (GC) riders of this generation was clear from Friday\u2019s joust. Pogacar accelerated first. Vingegaard countered but couldn\u2019t get to his rival. Their uphill sprint lasted 200 metres and at the line they had taken two seconds on the others. On the line Vingegaard stole a backwards glance, surprised to see so much daylight.<\/p>\n

I bring up the Pogacar-Vingegaard rivalry because after nine days this Tour has reached a crossroads and the signpost directs them into the Massif Central, where the weather will remain intensely hot and the seven category-two climbs mean that, after the short hills of the first week, we enter the mountains of the second week.<\/p>\n

There are reasons for believing the rivalry isn\u2019t what it was and that Pogacar has moved on to a level that Vingegaard cannot reach, but we\u2019ll come to that. On the pancake-flat ninth leg to Ch\u00e2teauroux, they were both content to cede authority to the teams with strong sprinters. <\/p>\n

The sprinters and their foot soldiers would have preferred something less stressful than the 174km race from Chinon. Mathieu van der Poel and his Alpecin-Deceuninck team-mate Jonas Rickaert were to blame for that. Rickaert has spent his career in the service of others, hewing wood, drawing water. He mentioned to Van der Poel his dream of one day standing on the podium of the Tour.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t matter to him how he got there, just to have that experience. Soon after the start, the two Alpecin riders broke clear. Van der Poel\u2019s thinking was that if they rode hard and stayed away long enough, the race organisers would give the day\u2019s combativity prize to his friend. Cycling does this all the time: bestows a hero\u2019s ovation on a rider precisely because he is not a hero. Van der Poel and Rickaert rode magnificently. They got their lead up to five minutes and resisted fiercely when the bunch came after them. There was wind and heat and still they endured. As he matched his team-mate\u2019s contribution to the pace-setting, Rickaert felt way out of his comfort zone. <\/p>\n

\u201cAt one point I said to Mathieu, \u2018I\u2019m exhausted,\u2019 and he just said, \u2018We need each other.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Rickaert gave more than he had and still had to surrender to the pain 6km from the finish.<\/p>\n

Van der Poel kept going, and though it never seemed as if he would hold off the pack, he gave it a hell of a go. With only 700 metres left, they got to him. Tim Merlier, riding for the Soudal Quick-Step team, did what Belgians do when winning a fiercely contested bunch sprint. Pogacar rolled across the line 26th in the bunch and if the Slovenian comes, will Vingegaard be far behind? The Dane was 27th. Onley finished safely in the peloton and stays seventh overall.<\/p>\n

\"Cycling<\/p>\n

Merlier crosses the line to win the ninth stage<\/p>\n

SHUTTERSTOCK EDITORIAL<\/p>\n

The rhythm changes now as the peloton heads for the Massif Central and a tenth stage with eight designated climbs. There will be changes to the GC. Many will lose time and others will gain. For Pogacar and Vingegaard it will be an important moment as we seek an answer to the question of whether their rivalry is still what it has been.<\/p>\n

Four years ago Vingegaard wasn\u2019t even meant to ride the Tour. Then one of the stars of Jumbo-Visma (as they were called at the time), Tom Dumoulin, unexpectedly retired. They asked Vingegaard to take his place. He was just making up numbers. Eight days into that Tour, Pogacar gained more than three minutes on his GC rivals and all but won the race. It was his second overall Tour victory.<\/p>\n

Three days later a strange thing happened. Relatively unknown, absolutely unproven, Vingegaard attacked Pogacar on Mont Ventoux and clearly stressed his rival. Eventually, Pogacar reeled him in but the message was unmissable. Pogacar was impressed. \u201cJonas will be even better than he is now. He could soon be a Tour winner.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"FILES-CYCLING-TDF-2022\"<\/p>\n

The pair battle it out on the 2022 Tour<\/p>\n

AFP<\/p>\n

Presumably Pogacar wasn\u2019t thinking of the following edition, but that\u2019s what happened. How could we ever forget Vingegaard and Primoz Roglic, then his team-mate, waving a red cloak in front of Pogacar on the early slopes of the Col du Galibier, drawing him into an unwinnable battle and then dropping him on the Col du Granon.<\/p>\n

Back then the two seemed friendly and ultra-respectful towards each other. It was Tadej this and Jonas that. Leading on the descent from the Col de Spandelles, Pogacar lost control and fell. Vingegaard had been chasing and, seeing his rival in trouble, he slowed and waited. Vingegaard won in 2022 and then, a year later, he dominated his rival and won by more than seven minutes.<\/p>\n

At the end of that 2023 Tour, Pogacar wondered if he would ever be able to beat Vingegaard in the Tour. He prepared for the 2024 race like never before and his rival, weakened by a horrible crash three months before the race, was nowhere strong enough. As emphatically as Vingegaard had won in 2023, Pogacar won in 2024.<\/p>\n

\"Tour<\/p>\n

Pogacar during his imperious 2024 victory<\/p>\n

REUTERS<\/p>\n

The nature of the rivalry has sharpened because it is no longer just the two of them. Their teams vie for supremacy and clearly dislike each other. Pogacar didn\u2019t like the Visma-Lease a Bike team riding hard to keep him in the Yellow Jersey last week and neither did he like Matteo Jorgenson coming up on his inside at a feed zone.<\/p>\n

The rivalry was renewed in last month\u2019s Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9. Vingegaard struck a blow when taking significant time in a time-trial on the fourth day. Then Pogacar pummelled him on the mountain stages that followed. <\/p>\n

On the first day that he went clear, he rode strongly all the way to the top. At the finish he joked that the reason he went so fast was so he could watch his partner, Urska Zigart, finish the second stage of the Tour de Suisse Women on TV.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of the Dauphin\u00e9, Vingegaard seemed almost resigned. He has been more defiant through the first nine days of this Tour but a doubt remains.<\/p>\n

Michael Rasmussen, a former Danish cyclist banished from the 2007 Tour while wearing the Yellow Jersey, believes that the two greatest GC riders of this generation are no longer on the same level. \u201cAs things stand, I don\u2019t think we should mention Jonas and Pogacar in the same sentence. Pogacar is riding at one level, Jonas is riding at the second-best level, and then there are all the others at levels below that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201c.We were dazzled by what Jonas did in 2023. But there\u2019s a very, very big gap that now needs to be closed if Jonas is going to match Pogacar to the finish. At the same time, you still have to remember what a fantastic athlete Jonas is. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s just ended up at a time in history where there\u2019s a Martian cycling around the Earth.\u201d <\/p>\n

Overall standings after stage nine1, T Pogacar (Slove, UAE Team Emirates-XRG) 33:17:22
2, R Evenepoel (Bel, Soudal Quick-Step) at 54sec behind
3, K Vauquelin (Fr, Arkea-B&B Hotels) 1:11
4, J Vingegaard (Den, Visma-Lease a Bike) 1:17
5, M Jorgenson (US, Visma-Lease a Bike) 1:34
6, M van der Poel (Neth, Alpecin-Deceuninck) 1:46
7, O Onley (GB, Picnic PostNL) 2:49
8, F Lipowitz (Ger, Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) 3:02
9, P Roglic (Slove, Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) 3:06
10, M Skjelmose (Den, Lidl-Trek) 3:43.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Towards the end of the first week of the 2023 Tour, I stopped for a coffee at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-263707","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\/114850541377508119","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263707","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=263707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}