Pogačar's perfection and Vingegaard's nightmare: Tour de France time trial brings major shift in GC dynamic – Analysis

The elastic has snapped. Is that all she wrote? After four days of Jonas Vingegaard matching Tadej Pogačar at the Tour de France, using his team to attack in the crosswinds on stage 1 and revealing his newfound explosivity to only narrowly lose out to him on stages 2 and 4, the time trial on stage 5 saw the Dane's brightening light fade into darkness.

Following 33km of necessary pain out and back to Caen, and a shocking time loss for the Dane, the Tour's two protagonists warmed down just a metre apart, with Vingegaard the big loser of the day, and Pogačar putting to bed any question of weakness in the race of truth.

Contrast has long followed these modern greats, but once again, Pogačar's 'perfect' day of delight coincided with Vingegaard's nightmare.

Just what did the Slovenian do between stage 4 of the Critérium du Dauphiné, where he was well beaten by Vingegaard, and stage 5 of the Tour de France, where he completely dominated his rival, scorching through the course 1:05 quicker? Only his team, coach and the training roads near Isola 2000 will know, but it was more than enough.

While Vingegaard now looks at a frankly massive – at this stage at least – 1:13 deficit to his closest rival as he sits fourth overall, he'll be left questioning just what went wrong, having been every bit Pogačar's equal in the four opening stages. A true disaster for the two-time Tour winner.

Is the race over? Of course not, only five days have been raced and all of the big mountains still remain, but it was a sign of inferiority that had not yet been exposed for Vingegaard in this race – he had only been on the up.

Talk of a second successive yellow jersey annihilation will resurface for Pogačar now, with Vingegaard's morale potentially broken, and his Visma-Lease a Bike team having no answers for what exactly went wrong.

Calling it an overperformance would be a stretch, as Pogačar always brings his best in July, but losing out only to Remco Evenepoel by 16 seconds, who showed everyone just why he was wearing the rainbow stripes of world champion and gold helmet of Olympic champion, is mighty impressive.

The gap to Evenepoel from the Dauphiné, too, was closed significantly, losing three times less time than he had in June. Pogačar is no specialist, but he's an expert at extracting the maximum when yellow is on the line, shown best in how he nearly binned it into the barriers as he navigated the final corners into Caen at full tilt.

Pogačar, despite winning stage 4 in Rouen, could have been worried as Vingegaard responded to his violent surge on Tuesday with the "best one-minute performance of his career", but it was 36 minutes and 58 seconds that mattered significantly more on Wednesday evening, halfway through the first week.

He'll be back on home ground as the race heads for Vire Normandie and the Mûr de Bretagne on Thursday and Friday, with a double dose of punchy potential, and the chance to break Vingegaard psychologically before the first vicious mountainous day on stage 10.

Pogačar often strikes when he smells blood, and has tended to put races to bed sooner rather than later. He could reach the brutal day at Le Mont Dore with a lead nearing two minutes if the Dane isn't able to put the brutal defeat on stage 5 behind him.

Evenepoel strikes back

He was always going to win it, but Evenepoel was also a massive winner in his favoured discipline on stage 5. Even with a special Pogačar ride, no one could stop him as he romped back to the finish in Caen at an average speed of 54 kph.

Intent is the word that best describes his performance, with each corner taken at maximum speed through the apex, followed up by a full sprint to get up to top speed, where no other bike rider is able to match his power or perfect TT position.

Watching Evenepoel is often like poetry in motion, but when the clock is ticking, he's even more of an artist than normal. He backed up his victory in the time trial from last year's Tour, albeit only with a marginally bigger gap over Pogačar in 2024, but it was certainly the Evenepoel everyone had been expecting to see.

Talk of his potential move away from Soudal-QuickStep to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe will rage on throughout the next 16 stages, but it's fair to say the noise can't be affecting him too much after that complete demolition.

After four days of looking a level below the Tour's two best, he now finds himself above Vingegaard on GC and with a 42-second deficit to Pogačar. Above his previous best of third, second place will, of course, be on his mind, but can Evenepoel take this momentum into the punchy stages and mountains and even dream of yellow?

Perhaps this is just the kick into gear that Evenepoel needs to reach his full potential. Stage 4 made it look like this Tour was going to be a two-horse race, but if Vingegaard can't recover from this major defeat, then Evenepoel could be substituted in as the worthy challenger to Pogačar's crown.

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