{"id":268875,"date":"2025-07-17T08:45:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T08:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/268875\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T08:45:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T08:45:11","slug":"should-the-tour-de-france-have-waited-for-tadej-pogacar-after-his-stage-11-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/268875\/","title":{"rendered":"Should the Tour de France have waited for Tadej Poga\u010dar after his stage 11 crash?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Did the Tour de France<\/a> peloton do the right thing? Should they have waited for Tadej Poga\u010dar <\/a>when he crashed with six kilometres remaining of stage 11<\/a>?<\/p>\n

After clipping the back wheel of Uno-X Mobility\u2019s Tobias Halland Johanssen with under 4km to go, Poga\u010dar lost control of his bike and fell to the ground. He was able to remount his chain and get back riding relatively quickly, but he found himself 22 seconds behind the peloton that included his GC rivals Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel.<\/p>\n

Here was a chance for Vingegaard and Evenepoel to ride hard and take back precious seconds from Poga\u010dar who before the stage had an advantage of over one minute on the pair.<\/p>\n

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But they didn\u2019t. They chose to sit up and allowed Poga\u010dar back into the group. It was, a relieved and thankful Poga\u010dar said, \u201crespect\u201d.<\/p>\n

Tour de France tradition dictates that in the event of an unfortunate crash, the peloton sits up and waits for the yellow jersey. But Poga\u010dar wasn\u2019t in yellow \u2013 Ben Healy of EF Education-EasyPost was.<\/p>\n

Was Poga\u010dar let off and have his rivals spurned a golden opportunity? \u201cWe waited for him, like we should do, in my opinion,\u201d Vingegaard told reporters afterwards. \u201cWhen it\u2019s like that, it\u2019s pure bad luck. It was not because he overcooked a corner or anything \u2013 he overlapped wheels so that [waiting] is the right to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vingegaard\u2019s Visma-lease a Bike\u2019s teammate, Matteo Jorgenson, concurred. Only a few days ago Poga\u010dar shoved Jorgenson in a feed zone. \u201cIt was a sporting decision,\u201d the American said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAfter a lot of comments the other day, I guess accusations of unsportsmanlike stuff that I\u2019ve never seen from him before, I think at least now he can be confident we\u2019re trying to beat him in a sporting way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Healy also had a chance to benefit and to extend his lead in yellow going into the first Pyrenean stage on Thursday, but he too towed the same line. \u201cIt was respect among the riders,\u201d the Irishman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever someone makes a silly mistake in the final when there\u2019s not going to be a crazy difference from that point forward, I think anyone would appreciate the same [gesture of waiting].<\/p>\n

The end result is that Healy, Poga\u010dar, Vingegaard, Evenepoel and other riders in the GC game all finished with the same time in Toulouse, behind the winner Jonas Abrahamsen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But had they not shown so much respect to a rider who many are still viewing as the theoretical leader of the race, the time gaps among the leading contenders could have been different.<\/p>\n

Will they come to regret their collective decision?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Did the Tour de France peloton do the right thing? Should they have waited for Tadej Poga\u010dar when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-268875","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\/114867702090755290","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268875","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=268875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}