The atmosphere at the Jumbo-Visma bus was quiet and calm as Jonas Vingegaard warmed down on the turbo trainer after stage 5 of the Tour de France.
There were no fist pumps and little celebrations, only a few smiling faces and a hint of happiness. Vingegaard and his team are perhaps well aware that the first stage in the Pyrenees was only the first battle won in a three-week race.
“I wanted to test him a bit and my legs were good and so I’m super happy with where I am,” Vingegaard explained, revealing his controlled satisfaction to a scrum of media at the Jumbo-Visma bus after his warm down.
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“I’m super happy with taking a minute, that’s a good time gain for me.”
Vingegaard distanced Pogačar in the final two kilometres of the Col de Marie Blanque after super domestique Sepp Kuss again produced a long burst of speed that distanced everyone else and hurt Pogačar.
Vingegaard caught the remains of the breakaway over the top of the climb, while Pogačar seemed stuck to the road and lost more and more time. At the valley finish in Laruns, where Pogačar won in 2020, the Slovenian had become the hunted instead of the hunter, with Vingegaard gaining a significant 1:04 on his big rival.
Vingegaard is 47 seconds down on stage winner and new race leader Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe) but he is already 53 seconds ahead of Pogačar in the overall standings. However, he refuted any suggestion that he is the big favourite for overall victory or that Pogačar is somehow finished as a rival.
“I don’t know about that, we’ll just do our best and see where it ends up in Paris,” he said. “I just felt good and I look at myself. If I feel good then I try to attack.
“I know Tadej never gives up, so it will be a fight all the way to Paris. I’m super happy with having 53 seconds, it’s super nice. Of course, we have to look to Jai Hindley too.”
Vingegaard and Jumbo-Visma did not expect Pogačar to be a shadow of his usual self and gain time so easily and so quickly as this. Thursday’s mountain finish at Cauterets-Cambasque and then the Tour’s later foray into the Alps seemed more likely arenas for differences between the two favourites.
“The plan was to have one guy or two guys in the break, as satellite riders. We ended up with three guys in the break, so that’s even better and the guys did super great today,” Vingegaard said in praise of his Jumbo-Visma teammates.
“We didn’t have to pull in the bunch which was good for us, then on the final climb I felt good and I said to Sepp that he should go to the front and start pushing. He did, then I attacked. That’s it.”
