Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) came to the Critérium du Dauphiné searching for answers, on both his own shape and how much his rivals Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) had closed the gap since his dominant Tour de France triumph last year.
In the trio's first meeting since that race, the stage 4 time trial only brought more questions about the World Champion, with his time loss to both the Dane and Belgian prompting commentators to speculate. Was he out of shape? Unhappy with his equipment? Sandbagging? Perhaps he just got his pacing wrong, as he claimed post-stage.
But all those questions were answered on stage 6 to Combloux, as the best rider in the sport proved exactly why he dons the rainbow stripes of the world champion, dropping everyone on the penultimate climb, seemingly with ease, before riding solo to the victory and back into the race lead.
Having started the day 22 and 38 seconds down on his two rivals respectively, he didn't just take over the lead, but he turned the race for the yellow jersey completely on its head, with a now advantage of 43 seconds to Vinegaard and 1:22 to Evenepoel established ahead of the Queen stage. Even he was surprised at his new lead.
"For sure, I did not expect it to be this much of a gap. I was expecting there to be maybe two, three guys following me, and then they would start to attack me," said Pogačar to CyclingProNet after stage 6.
"But I tried to really commit to the steep part and then accelerate on the easier sections. But if you do not have the legs, then you cannot do this, so I'm super happy that the legs were here and now I can be calm for the rest of the weekend.
"I got some very good answers. The shape is here, and not too much stress now after the time trial, which we have to look at a little bit, but the shape is here."
Executing the plan
He had started the stage incredibly calm, taking in Valserhône about not needing to "kill yourself" or "let the ego ruin your week" at the Dauphiné. And his team taking control after the breakaway formed didn't suggest ego, but confidence, on a summit finish that perfectly suited him.
The plan was to control the whole 126km and then attack from that base, but Visma disrupted that when they took over on the Côte de Mont-Saxonnex and started to drop Pogačar's teammates.
"We had this plan from the start, but it almost fell apart when Visma exploded everybody on the 1st category climb and we were not expecting this," said Pogačar, with Pavel Sivakov, Tim Wellens and Jhonotan Narváez all coming back to lead him into the final two climbs after the descent.
"But we came back together again, and we were strong. We did what we wanted to do and went on the steepest part. I'm super happy with how it went, and today's climb, I just had to push what I had in the legs.
"I'm super happy to be back in yellow. To pull it off like we did today was very good for us."
When Pogačar eventually made his race-winning move off the back of an infernal Narváez pull, Vingegaard was the only rider able to follow him, but even this was short-lived, with a violent seated acceleration seeing the Dane forced into damage limitation mode.
Pogačar joked at the finish about his urgency to attack, saying it was so he could watch his partner Urška Žigart finish the second stage of the Tour de Suisse women, but the early move was again an example of his propensity not to be patient, striking always whenever the iron is hot.
"We attacked at the bottom, because why wait too long?" said Pogačar.
"We committed, because we have nothing to lose, only to gain, and it was like this. It was a hot day, a hard day, and I had to hurry up just to see the finish of Urška at the Tour de Suisse, and I made it just in time, so all good."
While he may joke, Pogačar would have been well aware that today's stage was just the preamble to the brute that is Saturday's stage 7, with the hors catégorie climbs up the Col de la Madeleine, Col de la Croix de Fer and Valmeinier 1800 set to decide the overall winner of the Dauphiné.
Pogačar is confident, of course, even without the star climbing support that he will have at the Tour de France in July. After what we saw today, Visma should be the best climbing outfit overall, but if Pogačar's legs turn the same as they did on Friday, no team tactics will be able to help them.
"Tomorrow, a lot can happen, but it doesn't matter now what will happen tomorrow. I saw that I'm in good shape, that the guys are in good shape, and we will see what happens," added Pogačar.
"We will try to survive and defend the yellow jersey tomorrow. I know it's going to be hard, because of the long and difficult climbs, and here we don't have a pure climbing team, but so far we've seen the guys are in really good shape to pull it off on the climbs as well. Let's see what we can do. I'm quite confident that we can defend the yellow jersey."
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