There was madness over Jumbo-Visma’s approach to stage 11 of the Tour de France, but there was also method. The chaos that ensued over the Col du Télégraphe and the Col du Galibier had apparently been planned before the Tour even began.
The Dutch team generated an absurd race day, and the previous logic of the race collapsed properly on the Granon pass, when Jonas Vingegaard dropped a Tadej Pogacar who was hiding to get the stage victory and the yellow jersey.
Vingegaard’s decisive attack 5 km from the summit turned the race around. After catching and passing in front of former strikers Nairo Quintana and Romain Bardet, his radio headset came to life with the news that Pogacar was staggering down the mountain. With 4km to go, Vingegaard was already the leader of the virtual race. 3 km from home, it was 1:30 from Pogacar. At the top, he would win 2:51 at Pogacar to take a major lead at the top of the overall standings.
“Sure it took me energy listening to the gap grow, but it was also a very brutal climb, and I was suffering a lot and I just wanted it to end. I was completely at the limit from 3k to the end. Already,” he said. Vingegaard, who had missed the opportunity to climb the Granon during a pre-Tour training camp. “To be honest, when we did the stage reconnaissance, I didn’t do the last climb with the bike. I jumped in the car, so I didn’t experience it myself. I did it today, and it’s been brutal. to climb.”
The Jumbo-Visma assault began on the Télégraphe, when Primoz Roglic tested the waters, and continued non-stop on the lower slopes of the Galibier, where Vingegaard and Roglic took turns to attack Pogacar’s yellow jersey, throwing three accelerations each. Both men risked losing the Tour altogether by starting the race with so much running distance, but at least as Vingegaard said, the odds were appealing.
“It’s true that it was a risk, but on the other hand, I think both Primoz and I have already been second on the Tour,” Vingegaard said as he then took a seat in the press conference truck. “Last year, it was nice for me to be second in the Tour. If I didn’t try anything here, I would probably be second again, but I preferred to try something and get the victory, which we did today. I think it shows the mentality of the team, it’s amazing for me and also for the team.
“We wanted to attack from afar, we wanted to try it with Primoz, and I think that proves once again how great a Primoz pilot is. He was prepared for that plan, he fought hard for him and he went deep so we could challenge Tadej .. “
Above Galibier, at first, it seemed that the great Jumbo-Visma offensive had failed. When Pogacar picked up the pace approaching the summit, Vingegaard was the only man able to keep up. And even when the yellow jersey group swelled again on the other side, with no less than five Jumbo-Visma runners among them, Pogacar was very calm.
As the television bike approached his side, Pogacar smiled playfully at the camera, as if to underline the point. In retrospect, it looks like the yellow shirt protested too much.
“At Galibier above, he was very strong and dropped everyone else, and I was a little unsure about whether he was going full or not,” Vingegaard said. “But on the last climb I said that if I don’t try, I won’t win.”
Although Pogacar’s teammate Rafal Majka burned Vingegaard’s supporting cast at the Col du Granon, the yellow jersey was unable to increase its pace in response to the Dane’s poisonous acceleration with 5 minutes left. km. Vingegaard, however, later confessed that he had no real idea that Pogacar was working.
“No, but I took the opportunity. To be honest, I didn’t know if I was suffering, but the team told me on the radio that it would be steep with 5k by the end,” 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 was left with a gap.”
Alp d’Huez
Before the Tour began, Jumbo-Visma had destined the successive stages to the Alps as the place to try to isolate Pogacar with a collective onslaught. If they didn’t get it on Wednesday at the Granon Pass, the plan was to try it again on the Alpe d’Huez road on Thursday. Instead, Vingegaard will start the stage with a 2:16 advantage over Bardet in the overall standings and about 2:22 over Pogacar. Roglic, meanwhile, is now almost 14 minutes back and completely out of the picture.
Jumbo-Visma’s double offensive thus gives way to a unique approach: to defend Vingegaard’s yellow shirt from here in Paris. Given the depth of Pogacar’s difficulties at the top of the Granon, Vingegaard can try to place the Slovenian in more difficulty on stage 12, which returns the race over the Galibier and then through the neck of the Croix de Do before the last stretch. above the Alpe d’Huez.
Vingegaard and Pogacar entered the Tour as big favorites
After hosting the Grand Départ, Denmark now have their first yellow jersey since the controversial and finally doomed stage of Michael Rasmussen at the helm in 2007, while Vingegaard is also in line to become the first winner of the Tour de France. country from Bjarne Riis, another man with a troubling legacy. . However, instead of stopping in the past, the Danish masses at the 21 forks of the Alpe on Thursday afternoon will feel free to dream of what might come on this Tour. Pogacar, however, made a defiant note before leaving Granon on Wednesday evening. “The Tour is far from over,” he said.
“I still see Tadej as perhaps the biggest competitor and I hope he will try to attack me every day when he gets the chance,” Vingegaard warned. “Sure it’s going to be a tough race from now on to Paris, but we’ll do our best every day.”
The most popular Prime Day deals on Cyclingnews