Now what? Pogacar narrows Vingegaard's path to victory - Tour de France analysis

History has repeatedly shown that the truths suggested by the Critérium du Dauphiné in June don’t always hold up to scrutiny under the harsh glare of the Tour de France in July. Even so, when Tadej Pogačar showed distinct signs of weakness against the watch last month, there was a hardening consensus that the Slovenian might be vulnerable in the stage 5 time trial of the Tour.

There was undoubtedly a degree of wishful thinking at play. Pogačar might – might – be the greatest rider of all time, but dominance can get a bit repetitive and, yes, boring, no matter how thrilling the talent.

After all, Lionel Messi’s career wouldn’t have had quite like the same impact had it been made up entirely of him smashing improbably brilliant goals past Eibar and Osasuna. A bit of conflict is essential in any drama, and Messi’s repeated jousts with Real Madrid and his arduous road with the Argentinian national team are what made his narrative such a compelling one.

For Pogačar, the conflict in his career has been primarily driven by Jonas Vingegaard, the man who beat him to two Tours de France and placed second behind him in two more. Over the past season and a half, however, Pogačar has moved to hitherto unseen levels of performance. Last year’s Tour began as a duel, but it turned into a procession, despite Vingegaard’s undoubted quality.

There was mitigation, of course, and that provided hope for a closer contest in 2025. Vingegaard had suffered a life-threatening crash at Itzulia Basque Country last year, and his very presence at the Tour already felt a minor miracle. The expectation then was that the Dane would push his old rival a whole lot further this time around.

That hope is hanging by a thread after Wednesday’s stage 5 time trial in Caen, where a flagging Vingegaard lost 1:05 to Pogačar and now lies fourth overall, already 1:13 behind his old rival.

Vingegaard and Visma | Lease a Bike had begun this Tour in bullish form, splitting the field on stage 1 and vying to take the fight to Pogačar on seemingly unfriendly terrain at Boulogne-sur-Mer and again on the road to Rouen.

Even when Pogačar racked up his 100th pro win on stage 4, Vingegaard’s ability to track him on the Rampe-Saint-Hilaire and his third-place finish in the sprint maintained the illusion that this Tour would be a duel between two near equals. The contrasting fortunes of Pogačar and Vingegaard in the stage 5 time trial, however, strongly suggest otherwise. 

Vingegaard spoke before the Tour of how he was more powerful this time out, having regained the muscle mass lost during his rehabilitation in the spring of 2024. That claim looked to be borne out by performances at the Dauphiné, where he triggered the attacking on the flat opening stage and then put almost 1.6 seconds/km into Pogačar in the 17km time trial. 

Game on, or so it seemed.

Pogačar, like that other GOAT Michael Jordan, has a tendency to take these things personally. The UAE Team Emirates-XRG van was parked right next to Visma | Lease a Bike’s after that time trial and Pogačar reportedly slammed the window shut rather than listen to the rival team’s upbeat media interviews.

It’s not a stretch to imagine Pogačar feeding off that moment much like Jordan used a (perceived) slight from LaBradford Smith to motivate himself to score 36 points in one half against him the following night.

On Wednesday evening, Pogačar confessed that he had been perturbed by his poor showing in the Dauphiné time trial. It was not, as Tom Danielson fancifully claimed, an elaborate ploy. Working on the discipline was one of his key refinements during his final Tour training camp at Isola 2000.

“After Dauphiné, I was really disappointed with the time trial, I was thinking about every detail I got wrong. I was also maybe not hungry enough,” he said. “But I trained really well at Isola 2000 with the TT bike, and I started to believe in myself again, that after the Dauphiné, I could do better.” 

He did, and then some. After losing 2.79 seconds/km to Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) at the Dauphiné, Pogačar limited the damage to less than 0.5 seconds/km on the flat and fast run around Caen. More to the point, he returned his losses on Vingegaard at the Dauphiné with interest, putting 2.2 seconds/km into him here.

In the overall standings, Evenepoel is now Pogačar’s closest challenger at 42 seconds. Vingegaard, meanwhile, is fourth at 1:13. For context, after five stages in 2024 – which included the Col du Galibier – Vingegaard was 50 seconds down.

At the same point in 2023, after the Col de Marie Blanque, Vingegaard was already 53 seconds up. In 2022, after an intense day on the cobbles, Vingegaard was only 21 seconds down. The gap hasn’t been this big this early since 2021, when Vingegaard was 1:35 down after the stage 5 time trial – but that was also when he started the Tour as a foot soldier for Primoz Roglic. A different context, in other words.

The gap is best compared, mind, with Vingegaard's deficit after the stage 7 time trial last year. He was 1:15 down back then, and that was essentially as close as he would get before the road climbed in earnest and Pogačar moved inexorably out of sight.

Yet even though Evenepoel lies second overall, Pogačar couldn’t hide the fact that Vingegaard remains the yardstick. Even though he tried to claim that everyone in the top 10 was a threat, it was clear that Pogačar didn’t believe it himself, and he corrected himself almost in the same breath. 

“In the end, of course, Jonas is going to try the most, I think,” he said. “He’s the most hungry, I think, to gain back time. He’s in super good shape. His team’s in really good form and they will try tomorrow or the next days.”

Vingegaard and Visma quietly believed this time trial was a chance to steal a march on Pogačar, only for the Slovenian to turn up and hammer the (potential) hammer. And it's worth noting that he already did something similar in 2024. Back then, a retooled Pogačar showed that he could withstand the high-altitude and high-endurance rigours of the third week, which had been a cornerstone of Vingegaard's two Tour wins. 

Now what? What can Vingegaard and Visma realistically do over the remainder of this Tour to trouble imperial phase Pogačar? 

They have brought, as Matteo Jorgenson aptly described it, a Classics-style team to the Tour, with the aim of attacking Pogačar in the opening ten days. So far, there has been plenty of perspiration on that front from Visma, but an inspired Pogačar has looked strikingly comfortable amid the rough and tumble of those days.

The longer-term aim is surely to tire Pogačar out, just as he punched himself out in the opening half of the 2022 race. That might yet happen, but the early returns on investment are not promising. If anything, Vingegaard is the man who looks to be paying for his early efforts. That certainly looked the case in Wednesday’s time trial.

“My legs were not feeling so good. The result was matching my legs,” Vingegaard confessed. “I was fighting my bike and my legs today.”

Back in 2023, when Pogačar and Vingegaard were locked in a tit-for-tat joust for supremacy, some wondered if it might prove a tighter race than Greg LeMond’s eight-second victory over Laurent Fignon in 1989.

Vingegaard – presciently, as it turned out – saw things differently, politely insisting the race would be decided by minutes rather than seconds in Paris. So it proved. He enjoyed a landslide win over Pogačar in the final week, winning by more than seven minutes.

The two-time Tour winner touched upon that theme again when he spoke with reporters in Caen on Wednesday evening. “One minute seems like quite a lot,” he said. “But in the last few years, the Tour has been won by a bit more than that.” 

It has. But at this point, and against this Pogačar, that thought is surely as much a concern as a consolation. The duel continues, but there is only one favourite.