Visma-Lease a Bike's breakaway duo Sepp Kuss and teammate Simon Yates were both on the hunt for stage wins on Saturday's lengthy stage 14 trek through the Pyrenees, Kuss confirmed after the day's racing. On Saturday, it became clear that the Dutch squad continues to work mainly for Jonas Vingegaard on GC, but it is keeping more than half an eye on potential stage victories for its other riders as well.
Neither Kuss nor Yates, the latter already a stage winner in this year's Tour, were able to stay on terms with Thymen Arensman (Ineos Grenadiers), who stormed away from the break on the Peyresourde for a spectacular lone victory at SuperBagnères.
However, rather than he and Yates being up there in case Vingegaard launched an attack, Kuss said afterwards that he and his teammates "all have our chances on stages that suit us," He also explained that Matteo Jorgenson, who apparently fell behind intentionally to have greater freedom of manoeuvre for breaks, is more interested in a stage win than a top ten on GC.
Meanwhile, Vingegaard launched an unplanned late attack on Superbagnères, after he realised that the expected move by race leader Tadej Pogačar was not going to materialise.
Beaten by Pogačar at the line, the Dane's charge away four kilometres from the line both re-confirmed his return to top form after Friday's second place in a time trial, and also further buttressed his second place overall.
"It was a bit like yesterday I can be really happy with how my legs were feeling today," Vingegaard, now 4:13 behind the Slovenian but with an increased 3:40 advantage on third-placed Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) told reporters.
"In general, today [Saturday] was probably one of the hardest mountain stages I've ever done. It was hard for everyone, five hours in the saddle, so to do that performance was obviously very nice."
Vingegaard explained that the plan with Kuss and Yates had been for them to go for the stage win, but that Arensman had been impossible to follow. "Congrats to him," he added.
"I actually expected Tadej to go on the last climb, because in the second last climb [the Peyresourde] they [UAE] raced like he wanted to go for it.
"Then when I realised he probably wasn't going for it, I decided to do it myself."
Speaking in another interview, Kuss explained that although he had "run out of legs," to get in a breakaway was always a good place to be, and when Vingegaard and Pogačar overtook him in the main group of favourites, "things looked good."
He was more cagey, though, about there being a definitive change of tactics when somebody suggested that it had been a 'Free Kuss stage' and that with Pogačar so far ahead, there was a switch of focus by Visma. All Kuss said was that "there was a bit more following," but a definitive decision would be made after Monday's rest day.
What was noticeable, already, was that Visma's pre-TT strategy of racing hard on the climbs to try and isolate Pogačar appears to have been quietly binned, in favour of a more 'free-for-all' strategy, while Vingegaard himself sticks close to the Slovenian.
The clearest case in point of this is with Jorgenson, who went from firing off attacks of his own or sticking in the GC group to dropping out of overall contention altogether. On stage 14, Jorgenson slipped behind late on, losing over 18 minutes and falling from tenth to fifteenth overall.
"With Matteo, a stage win means a lot more than a top 10; he's still riding really strong. He's supermotivated and he'll be really good in the stages to come," Kuss explained.
"We'll keep trying, and the GC [with Vingegaard] is the priority. But on a hard stage like this, it doesn't hurt to be up the road, too."
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