Tour de France 2023 stage 16 preview - Race of truth

For once, Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard won’t have one another for company. The two favourites for this Tour de France have spent the past week more or less in lockstep, tracking one another’s every move, but they will finally be kept apart when they roll down the start ramp to take on the 22.4km individual time trial from Passy to Combloux on stage 16.

In a Tour where the pair seem to have one another’s measure every time the road climbs, this unusual race of truth may well prove to be the key arbiter of the entire race, a tiebreaker between two riders from another stratosphere who apparently cannot be separated by conventional means.

Pogačar accelerates, then Vingegaard responds. Jumbo-Visma apply some pressure, then UAE Team Emirates strike back. Vingegaard snags a time bonus, then Pogačar snatches one back. Every action in the hills and mountains of week two seemed to have an opposite but equal reaction. On the first day of week three, however, the two men will finally be left to their own devices and forced to race without the other as a reference point.

The intrigue of the time trial is only augmented by the relative lack of intelligence to be gleaned from their head-to-head record. Going back to their under-23 careers, Pogačar and Vingegaard have faced off nine times in time trials, with the Slovenian leading the series 6-3, but it is unclear quite how much relevance those past encounters hold to the 2023 Tour.

Vingegaard first defeated Pogačar in a time trial at the 2021 Itzulia Basque Country, when he placed third to the Slovenian’s fifth in a hilly 13km test won by Primoz Roglic, putting ten seconds into him in the process. At that year’s Tour, Pogačar claimed a supersonic win in the flat 27km test to Laval on stage 5, though Vingegaard quietly signalled his intentions for that race by placing third at 27 seconds. The Dane beat Pogačar in the flat final time trial in Saint-Émilion, though the Tour was already over as a contest by then.

Last year, meanwhile, Pogačar beat Vingegaard comfortably in the 13km opening time trial at Tirreno-Adriatico and narrowly over the same distance on the first day of the Tour in Copenhagen. Vingegaard, however, was Pogačar’s superior in the final time trial to Rocamadour, where he even slowed down to yield victory to teammate Wout van Aert.

The 2023 campaign, meanwhile, has provided no direct confrontation between Pogačar and Vingegaard in an individual time trial, with their sole meeting before the Tour coming at Paris-Nice. Vingegaard, however, has looked decidedly at ease against the watch this season, claiming a crushing victory at O Gran Camiño in February and then scorching to a fine second place – ahead of some notable testers – on stage 4 of the Critérium du Dauphiné.

By contrast, Pogačar’s only outing in the discipline came in the Slovenian Championships in June, where he won the title by more than five minutes on an uphill, 15km course, albeit against a field bereft of WorldTour riders. In other words, there are reasonable arguments for each man’s prospects in Tuesday’s test. Like just about everything else in this duel, it all seems too close to call.

The route

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When the route of the 2023 Tour was unveiled in October, the eye was naturally drawn to the succession of mountain ranges laid out along the route, starting with the Pyrenees in week one, then the Massif Central, Jura and Alps ahead of the grand finale in the Vosges on the penultimate day of the race. The Vingegaard-Pogačar battle, one assumed, would be decided on these passes.

It was certainly easy to overlook the meagre portion of time trialling kilometres, even if there have been lessons from recent history about the outsized importance of racing against the clock in a Grand Tour. In May, after all, the Giro d’Italia turned on Primož Roglič’s show of force in the final mountain time trial up Monte Lussari.

At the 2017 Tour, meanwhile, Romain Bardet more than had the measure of Chris Froome in the high mountains, but he still could only place third overall, his 2:20 deficit essentially amassed in that race’s 36km of time trialling. That Tour was an altogether more controlled kind of race than this riotous edition, but the parity between Pogačar and Vingegaard is such that the Combly time trial offers itself as a similar kind of tie breaker.

Although stage 16 takes place in the heart of the Alps, it doesn’t class as a mountain time trial, though it’s certainly not a flat one either. After leaving Passy, riders tackle the short Côte de la Cascade de Coeur, cresting the summit after 4.1km, with the first intermediate time check coming in Passy Chef-Lieu after 7.1km.

From there, the route drops gently towards the valley road that brings riders through Sallanches, and the ability to push a big gear is of ample importance from here to the second check at Domancy after 16.1km.

That marks the beginning of the day’s principal difficulty, the category 2 ascent of the Côte de Domancy (2.5km at 9.4%). The climb featured as part of the Megève time trial on the 2016 Tour but is, of course, most redolent of the 1980 World Championships. Bernard Hinault used its slopes to break his rivals on that heady afternoon, and the climb should define this time trial too.

Indeed, the climbing doesn’t stop even at the third intermediate check at the summit, which comes after 18.9km. Instead, the road continues to rise all the way to the finish line in Combloux 3.5km later.

The favourites

Pogačar rolls down the start ramp in Passy at 16.58 local time on Tuesday, with Vingegaard beginning his effort two minutes later. There are other riders in contention for stage victory, of course – including Vingegaard’s teammate Wout van Aert – and there is a fierce contest for the third step of the podium, but it is, inevitably, the duel for the yellow jersey that dominates the afternoon.

Speaking in recent days, both Vingegaard and Pogačar have struck upbeat notes about their prospects in the rolling, 22.4km test. “I like when time trials are short and with a lot of changes of rhythm,” Vingegaard said of a time trial he reconnoitred in June. The Dane and Pogačar each rode it again on Monday’s rest day and they will take one last look on Tuesday morning before racing for keeps in the afternoon.

Pogačar, like Vingegaard, is familiar with the terrain. “I know it pretty well, I hope it suits me pretty well. I can’t wait to start it,” he said, adding: “I think there’ll be gaps in the time trial.”

Something’s got to give, in other words, and although there are further tests to come on the Col de la Loze on Wednesday and in the Vosges on stage 20, this time trial is just as likely a place as any. But the rest is anyone’s guess.