After all the fireworks of the Pyrenees and the Massif Central, there's no knowing when Tour de France leader Tadej Pogačar will next go on the rampage in the mountains in this year's race. However, the UAE Team Emirates-XRG leader has said that he hopes that when the race hits the Vosges late on Friday afternoon, things will stay quiet.
Pogačar's logic, he explained in a succinct post-stage press conference on Thursday evening, is that since the big mountain stages will be on Saturday to Le Markstein and then on stage 15 to Plateau de Salaison in the Alps, he won't have any complaints if Friday's stage is much calmer.
"Tomorrow is a bit of a weird stage, it's very long, so it's going to be a hard day for us as a team, I think," he said of the 205.8 kilometre day. It is the longest of the entire race and the only one over the psychological barrier of 200, too.
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"We will need to survive as well as possible."
Given the blistering mountain performances produced by Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates-XRG both on stage 6 across the Col du Tourmalet and then again to Le Lioran on stage 10, the Slovenian's more detached attitude to the first day in the Vosges may be greeted with some incredulity by his rivals.
However, Pogačar is far from being the only voice in the peloton expecting that the 'one and a half' climbs he referred to - the category 3 Col des Croix and the cat. 1 Ballon d'Alsace - will not see any GC action, at least on UAE's part.
"Saturday and Sunday are the bigger days for the GC. Tomorrow, we will see what happens. But it would be best for us to save some energy for Saturday and Sunday," Pogačar pointed out.
When it was mentioned to him by a journalist that Eddy Merckx had taken his first yellow jersey and stage win at the summit of the Ballon d'Alsace in the 1969 Tour, the Slovenian seemed bemused rather than, as perhaps was being hinted, in any way keen to follow Merckx's example.
"Thank you for the fun fact. I didn't know, it's a good fact, but it's a fun fact, so I learned something new, thank you," Pogačar said simply.
As for his 62nd day in yellow on Thursday, Pogačar ranked fiftieth on the stage after the bunch was partly blocked on the run-in to Chalon-sur-Saône due to a late mass crash. However, as the crash was well within the five-kilometre 'safety zone', taking place within sight of the finishing gantries, no time losses were awarded as a result of the numerous gaps created by the pile-up.
Pogačar said his day had generally been a good one and that "it was all calm and good until Trek started to attack" - with 30 kilometres to go - "then harder in the final, all good on our side, I think."
Referring to the mass pile-up in the last kilometre where Caja Rural Seguros RGA sprinter Fernando Gaviria came off the worst and suffered a broken collarbone, he said, "I saw how many guys crashed in the final, I hope all is well"
"My bet [for the win] was on Fernando, he was riding well, I was really disappointed to see him on the ground, I just hope everybody is OK."
As for the long weekend of climbing, quite apart from his own stage win on the same roads back in the 2024 Tour de France, Pogačar confirmed that he had returned to the Vosges to check out the stage routes, so he felt confident he had done his homework for what was coming up.
"I did some recons with Isaac, and I know those roads quite well," he concluded, "so we will see. I am looking forward to it." But if Friday is a quieter GC day, though, it seems that even Pogačar won't be complaining.
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