Pogacar isolated by Visma but still unshaken - Tour de France analysis
Visma | Lease a Bike have spent the first half of this Tour trying to put Tadej Pogacar under pressure. They managed to isolate him on stage 10, but Jonas Vingegaard still hasn't gained so much as a second on the Slovenian.
The stratovolcano of the Puy-de-Sancy has been inactive for more than 220,000 years and there was no big eruption when the Tour de France came this way on stage 10 either, as Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard fought out their latest score draw.
It would be wrong, however, to suggest that there was no seismic activity detected. Visma | Lease a Bike continued their war of attrition against Pogačar in the Massif Central, and even if the Slovenian was wholly unflustered by the experience, it was striking that his teammates were shaken loose ahead of the finale.
After João Almeida’s abandon on stage 9, Pogačar’s climbing unit was further depleted here, with Pavel Sivakov distanced early in the stage. The Frenchman finished the day in the gruppetto, and his condition will be a concern for UAE Team Emirates-XRG.
In that light, Visma | Lease a Bike might have expected to make greater hay against an isolated Pogačar here. They signalled their intentions for the day by sending Simon Yates and Victor Campenaerts up the road in the early break, and then Sepp Kuss and Matteo Jorgenson took turns to attack on the penultimate ascent of the Col de la Croix Robert.
Pogačar ignored Kuss’ accelerations but responded in person to Jorgenson’s efforts, while Vingegaard remained glued to his rival’s wheel. The Visma offensive eventually burned off Pogačar’s last teammates Adam Yates and Jhonatan Narváez, but the man himself held firm on the short sharp final ascent of Le Mont Dore after Visma had set a fierce pace on the approach.
Indeed, Pogačar being Pogačar, he figured that attack was the best form of defence. After shutting down Jorgenson’s final move and then watching a Remco Evenepoel dig peter out, Pogačar unleashed a vicious acceleration of his own to bring order to proceedings. Like in Rouen on stage 4, Vingegaard was the only rider who could follow and, once Pogačar realised this, he desisted.
The pair didn’t even bother hammering home their advantage over Evenepoel et al, instead rolling in together and shaking hands as they crossed the line – grateful, perhaps, that they finally get a break from living in one another’s pockets when the Tour takes its first rest day on Tuesday.
Irritated
Both men could come away happy with their day’s work. Vingegaard’s teammate Yates won the stage from the early break, while Pogačar has managed to farm out the yellow jersey to Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost) for a couple of days at least.
But both men will also have come questions to ponder during the rest day. Pogačar’s isolation in the finale must surely have brought back unhappy memories of his ultimately ruinous pursuit of both Vingegaard and Primoz Roglič on the Galibier in 2022. Pogačar will need better performances from Yates, Sivakov and Marc Soler, in particular, when the race hits the Pyrenees later this week.
Vingegaard, for his part, claimed to be encouraged by the fact that he was able to follow Pogačar’s acceleration, which marks a significant improvement on the Critérium du Dauphiné. But he remains 1:17 behind his rival, and Pogačar hasn’t yet displayed the merest flicker of discomfort on this Tour.
“So far in this Tour de France, I’ve been able to follow all of his attacks, which I couldn’t do in the Dauphiné,” Vingegaard said. “That shows I have a better level now than in the Dauphiné.”
That much is true, but if the stage 5 time trial to Caen is any guide, then Pogačar has gone up a notch too since June. Still, Visma have reason to be encouraged by the relative struggles of UAE on Monday, even if Tim Wellens and Nils Politt performed some important heavy lifting for Pogačar ahead of the finale.
After the stage, Visma directeur sportif Grisha Niermann was asked if he had detected any weakness in Pogačar and UAE on this Tour. “No, for sure not in Tadej,” he said simply, and the inference was clear – Visma will enter the high mountains convinced they can isolate Pogačar still further.
The underlying problem, however, is that the Pogačar of 2025 appears to be altogether different to the more vulnerable foe they faced in 2022 and 2023. Pogačar was already the best rider in the world back then, of course, but he raced those Tour with an exposed Achilles heel. Since then, however, he seems to have armed himself robustly against any susceptibility to heat or high altitude.
No matter, Visma will continue to try, hoping that all their pressure will eventually create a fault line somewhere between here and Paris.
“We tried to attack, but the problem is we have a very strong opponent, and we try to put him under pressure every day,” Campenaerts said. “Sometimes I have the impression that he gets irritated or his team gets irritated that we try so hard. But we have to be honest, he’s the best rider in the peloton and the best rider may of all-time, who knows, so it’s very hard to counter him.
“But we try as hard as possible, and we think with Jonas we have the best chance to beat him to first spot. It will be extremely challenging, but we still have 11 days to come, and we will try a lot more.”
