It’s the first rest day of the Tour de France and no one is surprised that Tadej Pogačar is in yellow. After all, he came into the race as the favourite. With a star-studded UAE Emirates team massed around him and with the other members of the ‘Big Four’ club – Jonas Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel, Primož Roglič – all suffering from less-than-optimal preparation, the two-time Tour winner looked likely to follow the Giro d’Italia script of blowing away the opposition.
In an ideal world, after emerging from the dusty tracks around Troyes, Pogačar would have enforced his will on the peloton and all there’d have been left to speculate would be who was going to occupy the remaining podium places. That hasn’t happened, and I doubt there’s too much surprise in the UAE camp because, as Tom Pidcock observed, the level is so high at the Tour de France.
What Pogačar will have noted is that the rider with the least pre-Tour disruption, Roglič, has been the most vulnerable, and that Vingegaard, who we could have excused for showing some signs of fragility, hasn’t fallen apart at all. He may equally have been surprised by Evenepoel, whose victory in the first time trial was predictable enough but for whom the early Galibier and the gravel roads were supposed to indicate he didn’t yet have all the skills in his toolbox – a serious adversary, just not this year.
The not-quite-in-super-form Roglič being at only 96 seconds from the lead isn’t as bad as it could have been. Evenepoel at a little over half a minute is uncomfortable. But the biggest problem for Pogačar is that Vingegaard has been good enough to follow almost every attack. No hesitations, rarely out of position, and when he has been, there have been Visma teammates able to recover the situation. The Dane might be just over a minute off the lead, but he and his team have to be happy that the blows thrown by Pogačar haven’t had more of an effect than that.
The noise and mutterings that Vingegaard is riding defensively are rather harsh, and I was immediately reminded of the reproaches made by Olav Tinkov when describing Alberto Contador: “He’s boring”. Compared to Peter Sagan, also on the Russian’s team, he may well have appeared that way, but Contador won two Tours and seven Grand Tours in total. Three-week races are as much about patience as they are about seizing opportunities if they arise.
Jonas Vingegaard isn’t going to race his race until the terrain suits his characteristics, and the tracks around Troyes were not the moment to take on Pogačar. Even with the numerical advantage of having support riders around him, he would have been playing with fire. Those criticisms and jibes will have had no effect on him as the Tour heads into its second phase. The noise shows that Pogačar and Evenepoel are well aware that the defending champion is waiting and they’ll have to be careful. No one knows how Vingegaard is going to perform as he goes deeper into the race. Whether there’ll come a day when the effects of the Itzulia accident take their toll remains to be seen, but the fact that he’s in the position he holds is already remarkable.
With all the focus on the top three, Primož Roglič has flown largely under the radar. His time trial was good enough but everywhere else he hasn’t really been the fourth musketeer. With no direct involvement in any of the big accelerations, he’s been visibly lacking and the spectre of a bad day or bad luck doesn’t seem that far away. Things might change for the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe leader, though a stage race of this intensity is rarely a recovery zone. He looks shaky.
Someone meeting expectations is Evenepoel. He’s more than willing and able to challenge Pogačar and getting through the gravel without loss was another victory in itself. He was put under pressure but he still looks strong, and he’s confident, which isn’t that surprising given that his ambition and understanding of his talent have always been evident. The slight impatience of youth shows now and then, which he’ll need to keep under control, but in terms of form, he’s present and correct. His team isn’t, though, so he’s expending energy when with better support he wouldn’t be.
Still, until the Pyrenees are reached and Vingegaard’s true level is revealed, neither Evenepoel nor Pogačar can relax. They have to take every opportunity to test the Dane.
Cavendish among the success stories but some are falling short
While we can discuss the possibilities of what might happen in the GC battle, the other stories of the race continue to be positive. The French have won a third of the stages, Biniam Girmay has a good grasp of the green jersey, and finally, at last, thankfully, we no longer have to wonder whether Mark Cavendish will or won’t become the sole record holder of stage wins.
Project 35, which few believed in, has delivered, earlier than I personally thought it would. Those first few days in Italy were excruciating but Astana kept the faith and so his first chance of a win was enough for the Tour’s greatest sprinter to bless us with a trademark success. I often go on about how the average cyclist can’t possibly understand what it takes to be involved in a Tour de France stage, never mind those last few kilometres. The commitment, the risks, the speed and the awareness needed is beyond crazy. The stress is off the scale, which is why the GC teams are more than happy to bail out of the melée as soon as they can.
Matej Mohorič came close to describing the emotions and relief of winning one stage last year but Mark Cavendish has now done that 35 times. It’s almost unimaginable. The Merckx and Cavendish record is now only the Cavendish record and I wouldn’t be surprised if he wins another. The craft, experience and speed he showed in Saint Vulbas was vintage stuff, and if Ballerini, Mørkøv and co. put him in the same position again, there’ll be tears once more.
That’s one of the success stories but then there are the teams and riders not quite getting their tactics in order. Starting with Groupama-FDJ, I’m not picking on them but Marc Madiot has to be worried. The other French teams and riders are taking all the limelight, Lenny Martínez is being dropped, Romain Gregoire isn’t producing anything from the breaks, and Stefan Küng only just scraped in the top-10 of the TT after dropping his chain. Their rest day might not be peaceful.
Then there’s Israel-Premier Tech’s Derek Gee and EF Education-EasyPost’s Ben Healy, both often in the front and good enough to win a stage. However, desperation means they are doing too much work, attacking when they could be staying quiet, or totally messing up their tactics. EF got things so right when they executed their plan to put Richard Carapaz in yellow but lately, things have got messy. Israel-Premier Tech, meanwhile, seem to be lacking direction. Are they a GC team or a sprint team? Do they even know themselves, because for the moment it’s all a bit random?
Compared to the likes of Intermarché-Wanty, they seem to be missing any kind of plan. You could say the same of Cofidis based on results, but at least they look like they believe Bryan Coquard can win one of the harder sprint finishes.
Everyone else has got something from the nine stages ridden so far. Ineos haven’t won their stage yet but there’s the sense that Carlos Rodríguez will produce the goods later on and in the meantime, Tom Pidcock can choose certain days to infiltrate the breaks after coming so close amid the gravel chaos on stage 9.
The coming week through the middle of France will be interesting. The terrain is tough, it’s usually boiling hot, and there might even be some echelon action. UAE have the options of Juan Ayuso, João Almeida, and Adam Yates to follow a few attacks to put pressure on Visma-Lease a Bike and Soudal-Quick Step. That’s a scenario which would open up the GC race to a number of possibilities.
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