You Can't Spell "Freedom" without "EF"

America's Team cleans up at the nattys, and Pogačar puts the Giro to bed for real

Photo Credit: Aurélien Vialatte, ASO

There are two great places in a grand tour for a rider to gain time on his rivals: time trials and multiple-mountain stages. On a flat or hilly mass start stage, or one with only a single major summit, the peloton mostly stays together. The advantage of riding with allies outweighs any distinction in ability between elite GC rivals. Even Tadej Pogačar would be hard-pressed to put more than a matter of seconds at a time into his adversaries on easier terrain.

But in a time trial, there is not teamwork to hide behind. And on a stage like Stage 15, 222 kilometers long with two Category 1 peaks in the final 15 kilometers, an advantage of a few seconds can compound into minutes.

We got these in back-to-back days over the weekend, and Pogačar put the first grand tour of the season to bed.

The time trial wasn’t a disaster for Geraint Thomas, Dani Martínez, Ben O’Connor, and Antonio Tiberi. Five of the top six riders on GC after the stage made up five of the top seven riders on the stage itself, along with Filippo Ganna and Luke Plapp. Martínez, the only laggard, lost only 20 seconds to O’Connor despite finishing all the way down in 14th place.

But once again, Pogačar was best of the GC riders, in second place, 29 seconds behind Ganna. Pogačar has been knocking down and outpointing the field for two weeks, and while his opponents stayed on their feet in the second time trial, they needed to do more. They needed to put Pogačar on the canvas, rather than losing a narrow decision.

Because the next day, Pogačar went on the attack on the penultimate climb. Only Martínez was able to even contemplate following, and by day’s end, the maglia rosa had won his third stage of the Giro and added three minutes to his lead. Pogačar woke up on Saturday with a lead of less than three minutes. He went to bed the following evening leading by almost seven.

It’s an advantage fit to make me look up the largest margin of victory in Giro d’Italia history—almost two hours, it turns out, set in the cocaine-and-strychnine days of 1914. So that’s not going to happen. On Friday, after two more mountain stages I’ll have some historical context for how dominant Pogačar has been.

But first: U.S. national championships.