Where Can Vingegaard Beat Pogačar?
Feels like the Tour de France comes earlier every year
The next race on the men’s World Tour calendar is the big one: the Tour de France. I’m going to do a full rider-focused preview of the race next week, once the official rosters are all out. We’ve known for months which star riders are going to go to this race, but it’s good to know the whole squad before making assumptions about the secondary classifications.
What I know now, or what I strongly suspect at any rate, is that this race is going to come down to Tadej Pogačar vs. Jonas Vingegaard. These two riders have finished 1-2 in some order for four years running, and one of them has won the Tour every year of the 2020s so far. Pogačar is too strong and too aggressive to fall victim to the tactical and strategic follies that have undermined other great GC riders, and Vingegaard is the only rider who’s demonstrated an ability to put Pogačar on the mat in meaningful competition.
These two riders have competed against each other 159 times since 2018, dating back to the Tour de l’Avenir,1 which Pogačar won over Thymen Arensman and the late Gino Mäder, with Vingegaard finishing 66th.
On 28 out of their first 29 racedays, Pogačar finished ahead of Vingegaard, which is to be expected. Pogačar came out of the womb as a world-beater, while Vingegaard didn’t really establish himself as a grand tour GC threat until he inherited team leadership from Primož Roglič at the 2021 Tour.
Nevertheless, Pogačar holds the career lead over Vingegaard, 126-33. Vingegaard has beaten Pogačar in one-up sprints and time trials fairly recently—actually, as recently as the Dauphiné two weeks ago—but the last time he put time into Pogačar on the road in a mass start stage was Stage 17 of the 2023 Tour. Since then, Pogačar has either beaten or finished with Vingegaard in their last 30 mass start confrontations.
This is how Pogačar operates. He’s the best in the world at breaking off a long-range solo raid, the kind that decides grand tours in an afternoon. But against Vingegaard at the Tour, Pogačar wins by wearing him down gradually. A few seconds here, a few there, a sprint up a short, punchy climb over here.
When Vingegaard wins—and it happens; he’s batting .500 at the Tour—it’s because he lands one haymaker on a day of weakness for Pogačar.
So if that’s coming this summer, I want to know where. I went back through the ProCyclingStats archive and found the 10 race days in which Vingegaard put more than 20 seconds into Pogačar.
2021 Itzulia Basque Country Stage 4
Hilly stage, Vitoria-Gastiez to Hondarribia (189.2 km)
2,646 meters of climbing; One Category-1 climb, one Cat-2, two Cat-3s
Vingegaard finishes in the lead group, in fourth place; Pogačar finishes 12th, 49 seconds back
I remember this Tour of the Basque Country well, because I believe it’s the last time Pogačar has ever had to work for a teammate. Pogačar entered this stage in second place on GC behind Roglič, but on the last climb Brandon McNulty followed a move and went clear, so Jumbo-Visma sent their own GC understudy, Vingegaard, after him while Roglič and Pogačar marked each other. Vingegaard made it across to McNulty, and the two ended the day in the leading group of four, with McNulty taking the leader’s jersey.
This led to a total nightmare for UAE two days later when McNulty cracked and Pogačar got caught between helping his teammate and chasing Roglič. Roglič finished second on the stage and won the race, with Vingegaard second, Pogačar third, and McNulty almost eight minutes back in 17th. Suffice it to say leadership confusion has not been an issue for UAE (at least not with Pogačar in the squad) since.
In short: This result was born out of factors which will absolutely, 100% not be in play at the Tour de France. It’s not a useful template.
2021 Tour de France Stage 20
Flat individual time trial, Libourne to Saint-Émilion (30.8 km)
246 meters of climbing, no categorized climbs
Vingegaard finishes third, 32 seconds behind stage winner Wout van Aert; Pogačar finishes eighth, 57 seconds behind van Aert
Pogačar had very little riding on this stage; he’d won an ITT already on Stage 5, and entered the final competitive stage with a lead of almost six minutes on Vingegaard. It’s not really in Pogačar’s nature to phone a race in when there’s nothing to gain by pushing, but I have to imagine he was primarily concerned with staying wheels-side-down so he could pocket another maillot jaune in Paris the following day.
And all that said, it only ended up being a 25-second loss.
2021 Giro dell’Emilia
2021 Bretagne Classic
Vingegaard didn’t come close to winning either of these races, but Pogačar DNF’d both.
I guess that’s one strategy for Vingegaard: Hope Pogačar doesn’t finish
2022 Tour de France Stage 11
Mountain stage, Albertville to Col du Granon (151.7 km)
4,070 meters of climbing; Two outside-category climbs (Col du Granon and Col du Galibier); one Cat-1 (Col du Télégraphe); one Cat-2
Vingegaard wins stage; Pogačar finishes sixth, 2 minutes, 51 seconds behind
This is what we’re talking about. Vingegaard took the yellow jersey off Pogačar and broke him—well and truly broke him—for the first time in his career.
It’s not every day that a race, even one like the Tour, hits altitudes like you’ll find at the Galibier (2,630 meters) and Col du Granon (2,404 meters). And in temperatures of 25 degrees Celsius, which is 77 degrees in freedom heat units. I’ve been assured by some very touchy European cycling fans on the internet that 77 and sunny is actually searing heat. I mean, I didn’t ride my Peloton this week because of the heat, but it was 95 degrees (35 Celsius) in my living room.
Anyway, Pogačar has been prone to give away big chunks of time at extremely high altitude. And by “prone to” I mean it’s happened like three times, including the Col de la Loze climb at the 2020 Tour, where it looked like Roglič had finally put him down for good.
Oops.
At the same time, last year the Tour summited the Cime de la Bonette in Stage 19, a peak almost 200 meters higher than the Galibier, and Pogačar not only won the stage, he put a minute and 42 seconds into Vingegaard. So it’s not a guarantee.
2022 Tour Stage 18
Mountain stage, Lourdes to Hautacam (143.2 km)
4,036 meters of climbing; two outside-category climbs (Col d’Aubisque and Hautacam); one first-category climb (Col de Spandelles)
Vingegaard wins stage; Pogačar finishes second, a minute and four seconds behind
This is the stage where Pogačar and Vingegaard went clear, then Vingegaard locked his brakes on a descent, got his back wheel off the road, and had a Code Brown for the ages. Pogačar the overshot a corner and ended up in a ditch later on the descent, and Vingegaard waited for him. Lovely sportsmanship there.
Actually hitting the deck probably took a little out of Pogačar, but what really did him in was Jumbo-Visma pulling off one of its favorite tactical moves with perfect effect. Sepp Kuss and Wout van Aert—for my money the two most effective satellite riders of their generation—got into the breakaway. Vingegaard and Pogačar caught Kuss partway up the Hautacam. He dragged Pogačar and Vingegaard up the hill until they hit van Aert with 5 kilometers left, at which point van Aert floored it and dropped a weary Pogačar within 800 meters.
Not like we needed another reminder of what van Aert can do as a domestique, but there’s nobody out there who’s better at this specific thing.
2023 Tour de France Stage 5
Mountain stage, Paul to Laruns (162.7 km)
3,652 meters of clmibing; one outside category climb (Col du Soudet); one Cat-1; one Cat-3
Vingegaard finishes fifth, 34 seconds behind stage winner Jai Hindley; Pogačar finishes eighth, a minute and four seconds further back
This stage was won by an unusually strong break, led by Hindley, Giulio Ciccone, Dani Martínez and Felix Gall. This was a more traditional mountain train by Jumbo-Visma, but the players were the same: van Aert whittled down the main group to less than a dozen riders, Kuss dropped everyone but Pogačar, and Vingegaard let it rip up the first-category Col de Marie Blanque.
This is the one time I’d say Pogačar actually looked relatively weak. This was not an especially hot day (even for a European). Not a huge climb, and nothing over 2,000 meters’ elevation, which is where high-altitude effects start to get really brutal.2 And in the first week of the Tour, no less.
This was just a rough tour for Pogačar in general, and it came after he’d gone all-in on the spring classics, so I wonder if he was just not feeling 100% for a grand tour. Either way, this was the tail end of the Jumbo-Visma/Visma-Lease a Bike era of team domination. Now, the UAE squad is just as loaded, and it’s unlikely Vingegaard will be able to isolate Pogačar like this again, especially not with Kuss and van Aert both still available to pull.
2023 Tour de France Stage 16
Hilly/Mountainous individual time trial; Passy to Combloux (22.4 km)
636 meters of climbing; one second-category climb (Côte de Domancy)
Vingegaard wins stage; Pogačar comes in second, one minute and 38 seconds back
If you watched the last season of Unchained,3 you know that Vingegaard and Jumbo-Visma went balls-to-the-wall here, mapping out the perfect route on an inch-by-inch basis. It’s one of the great grand tour time trial performances, and when Vingegaard really nails a time trial, he can beat Pogačar in a fair fight. It was also 31 degrees Celsius, which even I’ll concede is way too warm to be doing more than half an hour of horrendous cardio. If the Pogačar Heat Weakness Theory is true, that could’ve been enough to make the difference here.
But it didn’t fall apart until the next day.
2023 Tour de France Stage 17
Mountain stage; Saint-Gervais Mont-Blanc to Courchevel (165.7 km)
5,399 meters of climbing; one outside-category climb (Col de la Loze); two first-category climbs; one Cat-2
Vingegaard finishes fourth, a minute and 52 seconds behind stage winner Felix Gall; Pogačar finishes 22nd, 5 minutes and 45 seconds further back
This was really the Murphy’s Law stage for Pogačar. Multiple big climbs, massive altitude, Week 3 of the race. Even Superman runs out of gas sometimes. And that’s what happened. Pogačar crashed early in the day and had to ride the last 140-odd kilometers with a skinned knee, and Jumbo-Visma paced hard all day.
By the time they got to the Col de la Loze, which had given Pogačar trouble in 2020, he was no longer glued to Vingegaard, and he was wobbling off the back of the group. He got dropped eight or nine kilometers from the summit and lost almost six minutes between the last quarter of the Col de la Loze climb and the descent to the line.
2025 Critérium du Dauphiné Stage 4
Hilly time trial; Charmes-sur-Rhône to Saint-Péray (17.4 km)
214 meters of climbing; no categorized climbs
Vingegaard finishes second, 21 seconds behind stage winner Remco Evenepoel; Pogačar finishes fourth, an additional 27 seconds behind Vingegaard
I wrote about this stage a couple weeks ago, and we’re getting into really big word count territory, so I won’t go into too much detail.
Remco, Vingegaard, and Matteo Jorgenson all rode the wheels off their bikes. Pogačar had a wobble on the descent, and he lost less than half a minute all told. He then won back-to-back mountain stages over the weekend, gapping Vingegaard both times.
Here’s my conclusion: The real monster stages—multiple HC climbs, over 2,000 meters—are Vingegaard’s real shot at putting Pogačar on the mat. And you know what’s coming back to the Tour de France this year for the first time since 2022? Hautacam. What’s coming back to the Tour de France for the first time since 2023? Col de la Loze.
So it’s a greatest hits list of climbs that have bothered Pogačar before. And while I don’t doubt that Vingegaard can really nail it on a hot day and get his one big blow in, Pogačar and UAE are getting so much better at eliminating those opportunities. The team is stronger, Pogačar is stronger, and he’s taking the initiative more than ever.
Besides, those opportunities to put time into Pogačar were never that frequent to begin with. Only five of these 10 race days resulted in Vingegaard gaining a minute or more in a stage race. And since then, Pogačar has either won or held serve every time they’ve raced for the past two years.
Anyways, good luck, Jonas. It’s not going to be easy.
The junior Tour de France
Which is way lower than what Bill Paxton said in Vertical Limit
Otherwise known as Pedal to Survive