A Conspiracy at the Highest Level, or a Slow Stopwatch?
Also, is the Tour de France already over?
In hindsight, it was always going to work out this way, but I got sick at an inopportune time. Coming home from vacation, during a week that was already loaded while I was writing pre-MLB Draft features, and—most relevant to this newsletter—during the Tour de France.
If nothing else, it’s a good reminder not to snark on riders for abandoning a race when they get a cold, because this shit is no joke. Waking up this morning with just a headache and runny nose, after spending all day yesterday so sore I could barely move, I already feel like a new man.
Unfortunately, that put me a little bit behind in terms of the editorial schedule. So I’m going to do the following: A brief recap of Stages 5 and 61 tonight, and on Monday I’ll take a quick look at the GC and points classification battles on the first rest day. Same content, just twice as many emails.
The first three stages of the Tour de France were pretty typical. A couple sprint stages, a classics specialist (Mathieu van der Poel) in the maillot jaune, and a few big names2 already on their way home after big crashes. It was supposed to be more of the same on Stage 4, with no climbs harder than Category 3, but Tadej Pogačar is a total sicko who can’t help himself.
He attacked, dropped everyone, got brought back by Jonas Vingegaard and later by a group led by Remco Evenepoel, then won the sprint to the finish to put him level on time with van der Poel heading into the first time trial. That ITT was supposed to be the first real movement in the GC battle, but Pogačar’s Stage 4 attack had already shaken loose a number of podium hopefuls. Primož Roglič, Carlos Rodríguez, Felix Gall, Florian Lipowitz and Enric Mas all lost between 30 and 64 seconds on the stage.
But the only two guys with anything approaching a realistic shot at beating Pogačar—Vingegaard and Evenepoel—lost only single-digit seconds on the stage. Nothing significant at all, even when every second counts.
But both would have to put time into Pogačar in the ITT in order to have a shot at the yellow jersey. Evenepoel is legitimately stronger than Pogačar against the clock, making him one of only a handful of riders who’s distinctly better than Pogačar at any discipline. And the only time Vingegaard’s beaten Pogačar at the Tour without Pog completely blowing up and also possibly being injured, it was because of a beastly time trial performance.
Moreover, Pogačar’s attack had hurt his time trial chances. By taking the KOM points on the final climb, Pogačar took the polka dot jersey off his teammate, Tim Wellens, on countback—apparently to the surprise of UAE team management. That forced Pogačar into a race-provided polka dot skinsuit instead of his normal, faster model.
In terms of straws to grasp at, I’ve seen worse.
Evenepoel did put time into Pogačar, but only 16 seconds. Things were even worse for Vingegaard.
In a vacuum, he didn’t do terribly. He was two seconds behind Roglič, a former Olympic ITT gold medalist, and four seconds ahead of former ITT world champion Tobias Foss. But on the stage, that was only good for 13th, more than a minute down on both Evenepoel and Pogačar.
Vingegaard didn’t crash or anything, he just started slower than his GC rivals and continued to bleed time steadily throughout the course. The power just wasn’t there.
The obvious question now is: Has Pogačar already wrapped the yellow jersey up?
In the sense that Vingegaard needed everything to go right anyway, losing more than a minute on a stage he’d probably earmarked as a winner is not a good sign. Especially because there’s no extraneous factor—a mechanical failure, or changing weather conditions, to blame.
At the same time, any path to victory for Vingegaard was probably going to come down to one big swing, one big attack to gain several minutes on Pogačar all in one move. Probably on Stage 18, probably on Col de la Loze, the one mountain that has consistently put Pogačar in the blender. That’s still just as feasible from a minute down as from a position of parity.
But the odds of Vingegaard getting to Stage 18 within striking distance—much less actually dropping a knockout blow on the noggin of an increasingly unflappable Pogačar—are far more remote than they were 72 hours ago.
My major rooting interest in this race is for a close GC battle. Failing that, my main concern—even as someone who would probably rather see Pogačar win than Vingegaard—is that if Pogačar gets into yellow early he will absolutely smother the rest of the race.
Vingegaard and Visma-Lease a Bike don’t run quite as traditional a grand tour playbook as US Postal or Sky,3 but it’s still the orthodox mountain train bully playbook. Once they’re in a position to win, they ride not to lose. That means, in general, that they let the break go a lot. Especially when they can get one or both of the two best satellite riders in the world—Wout van Aert and Sepp Kuss—into said break before it leaves the station.
Pogačar doesn’t do that. He chases everything. Even in Week 3 of the race, when it’s already won. Last year, Pogačar won six stages of the Giro and six more at the Tour. Eight of those 12 stage wins came after the halfway point of the race, and six of those eight came in Stage 15 or later, with a lead of at least three minutes on GC.
When Vingegaard has a race under control, he keeps it under control. When Pogačar has a race under control, he runs up the score.
Which had me worried, when a ludicrously strong breakaway, for Week 1 at least, got away on Stage 6: van der Poel, Ben Healy, Michael Storer, Simon Yates, Quinn Simmons…a bunch of dangerous guys. Pogačar, once in the leader’s jersey, doesn’t like letting it go. But he did here, giving the break several minutes of rope, enough to put van der Poel back into the virtual lead of the race with room to spare.
After some gamesmanship heading into the final couple climbs, Healy got free with over 40 kilometers to go and quickly put the race to bed. He stretched out a lead of close to a minute, which the group behind was loath to cooperate to close, knowing that a sprint loss to van der Poel would likely be their reward. Even when Simmons and Storer got loose, they couldn’t close the gap.
So Healy was left alone, making good on my hope for EF as a stage-hunting team, and encountering some bold culinary opinions along the way.
We need that guy to hook up with the dude who held this sign in Paris-Roubaix. They could get a whole restaurant going.
Anyway, Healy won the stage by almost three minutes, while van der Poel gassed and only managed to retake the yellow jersey from Pogačar by a single second.
Which I didn’t think was the case at first, because NBC/Peacock started the stopwatch a few seconds late when van der Poel crossed the line. He needed to beat Pogačar by a minute and 28 seconds to retake the race lead, but he finished 3:57 behind Healy on the broadcast (3:58 officially) and the counter didn’t get going until the four-minute mark. Pogačar was credited with Healy’s time plus 5:27.
Ordinarily, a second either way doesn’t matter, but this was the rare occasion on which it truly did come down to a tick or two.
And even if ASO had screwed with the timer to put van der Poel in yellow—as I had originally thought—I would’ve been happy. Because the longer his team is in control of the break, the more breakaways will be let go, and the greater opportunity there will be for stage hunters, like Healy, to have their day in the sun.
Each significant in its own way
Jasper Philipsen, Filippo Ganna, Stefan Bissegger
By which I mean not caring about anything but the GC, not doing a bucketload of drugs