There was madness about Jumbo-Visma’s approach to stage 11 of the Tour de France, but there was method in it too. The chaos that ensued over the Col du Télégraphe and Col du Galibier had been planned seemingly before the Tour had even begun.
The Dutch squad generated an absurd day of racing, and the race’s previous logic duly collapsed upon itself on the Col du Granon, as Jonas Vingegaard dropped a flagging Tadej Pogacar to claim stage victory and the yellow jersey.
Vingegaard’s decisive attack 5km from the summit turned the race on its head. After he caught and passed previous attackers Nairo Quintana and Romain Bardet, his radio earpiece crackled into life with news that Pogacar was floundering further down the mountainside. With 4km to go, Vingegaard was already the virtual race leader. 3km from home, he was 1:30 clear of Pogacar. Come the summit, he would gain 2:51 on Pogacar to take a commanding lead atop the overall standings.
"For sure, I was getting energy from hearing that the gap was growing, but it was also a really brutal climb, and I was suffering a lot and I just wanted it to be over. I was completely on the limit from 3k to go already," said Vingegaard, who had eschewed the chance to ride up the Granon during a pre-Tour training camp. "To be honest, when we did the recon of the stage, I didn’t do the last climb on the bike. I jumped in the car, so I didn’t experience it myself. Today I did, and it was a brutal climb."
The Jumbo-Visma assault began on the Télégraphe, when Primoz Roglic tested the waters, and it continued unabated on the lower slopes of the Galibier, where Vingegaard and Roglic took it in turns to attack Pogacar’s yellow jersey, launching three accelerations apiece. Both men risked losing the Tour altogether by igniting the race with so much distance left to run, but, at least in Vingegaard’s telling, the odds were appealing.
"It’s true that it was a risk, but on the other hand, I think both Primoz and I have been second in the Tour already," Vingegaard said when he took a seat in the press conference truck afterwards. "Last year, it was nice for me to be second on the Tour. If I didn’t try anything here, I’d probably be second again, but I preferred to try something and reach out for the victory, which we did today. I think it shows the mentality of the team, it’s incredible for me and also the team.
"We wanted to attack from far, we wanted to try with Primoz, and I think that shows again how big a rider Primoz is. He was up for this plan, he really fought for it, and he went deep so we could challenge Tadej."
Over the top of the Galibier, mind, it initially looked as though Jumbo-Visma’s grand offensive had backfired. When Pogacar pressed on the pace approaching the summit, Vingegaard was the only man able to follow. And even when the yellow jersey group swelled again over the other side, with no fewer than five Jumbo-Visma riders among their number, Pogacar looked at considerable ease.
As the television motorbike drew up alongside him, Pogacar smiled playfully to the camera, as if to emphasise the point. In hindsight, it seems the yellow jersey protested too much.
"On the Galibier over the top, he was very strong and he dropped everyone else, and I was a bit insecure about whether he was going full or not," Vingegaard said. "But on the last climb, I said if I don’t try, I’m not going to win."
Although Pogacar’s teammate Rafal Majka burned off Vingegaard’s supporting cast on the Col du Granon, the yellow jersey was unable to lift his tempo in response to the Dane’s venomous acceleration with 5km remaining. Vingegaard, however, confessed afterwards that he had no real inkling that Pogacar was labouring.
"No, but I took the chance. To be honest, I didn’t know if he was suffering but the team told me on the radio it would be steep with 5k to go," Vingegaard said. "I was thinking, ‘Either they make it hard, or I try to attack.’ And that’s what I did. I wanted to attack, and luckily, I could. In the end, I got a gap on him."
Alpe d'Huez
Before the Tour began, Jumbo-Visma had earmarked the successive stages in the Alps as the place to try to isolate Pogacar with a collective onslaught. If they didn’t succeed on Wednesday on the Col du Granon, the plan was to try again on the road to Alpe d’Huez on Thursday. Instead, Vingegaard will begin the stage with a lead of 2:16 over Bardet in the overall standings and some 2:22 over Pogacar. Roglic, meanwhile, is now almost 14 minutes back and completely out of the picture.
Jumbo-Visma’s dual-pronged offensive thus gives way to a singular focus: defending Vingegaard’s yellow jersey from here to Paris. Given the depths of Pogacar’s travails atop the Granon, mind, Vingegaard may well look to place the Slovenian in further difficulty on stage 12, which brings the race back over the Galibier and then up the Col de la Croix de Fer ahead of the final haul up Alpe d’Huez.
Vingegaard and Pogacar entered the Tour as major favourites
After hosting the Grand Départ, Denmark now has its first yellow jersey since Michael Rasmussen’s controversial and ultimately doomed stint in the lead in 2007, while Vingegaard is also in line to become the country's first Tour winner since Bjarne Riis, another man with a troubling legacy. Rather than dwell on the past, however, the Danish masses on the 21 hairpins of the Alpe on Thursday afternoon will feel free to dream of what might come on this Tour. Pogacar, however, struck a defiant note before he left the Granon on Wednesday evening. "The Tour is far from finished," he said.
"I still see Tadej as maybe the biggest competitor and I expect he will try to attack me every day when he has the chance," Vingegaard warned. "For sure, it will be a hard race from now until Paris, but we’ll just do our best every day."
