Pogacar's 2025 version cannot be broken by Visma - Tour de France analysis

Nothing to be done. Even Visma | Lease a Bike must be beginning to come around to that opinion by now, but that doesn’t mean their efforts to discommode Tadej Pogačar on stage 18 of the Tour de France were misplaced.

Their tactical approach can be debated, of course, but it’s almost a side issue to the overarching issue of this Tour. The problem for Jonas Vingegaard and Visma hasn’t been one of strategy, but one of strength: this version of Pogačar is simply too good.

He’s certainly too good to be taken down by the same weapons Visma deployed in 2022 and 2023, when they used their strength in numbers to wear him out, isolate him and then attack him. 

Crucially, Pogačar’s current vintage is also seemingly immune to the various sources of kryptonite – heat, altitude, time trials, the third week – that made him a much more vulnerable foe during Vingegaard’s two Tour victories.

When Visma | Lease a Bike sent Matteo Jorgenson up the road on the Col du Glandon on stage 18, it was already clear that they were cooking from the same recipe that brought them such joy on the Col du Granon three years ago. But these days Pogačar has a more robust constitution, and he was able to digest everything they served up.

Visma’s forcing on the Col de la Madeleine felt like a reprise of their onslaught over the Col du Galibier back in 2022, and there was an inevitability about Vingegaard’s attack 5km from the summit. Inevitable, too, was Pogačar’s seated response. Not for the first time on this Tour, he made it all look so disarmingly easy.

In 2022, of course, Vingegaard still had Primoz Roglič as a teammate and a notional GC threat to Pogačar, and that two-pronged attack was ultimately what blunted their rival. Even so, Vingegaard’s attack with 72km to go here was certainly worth trying and worth persisting with. His own powers of endurance remain intact, after all. Like Jakob Ingebrigtsen with Josh Kerr, he figured he might as well try to take the sting out of Pogačar’s acceleration before the final lap.

“If you want to gain back four minutes, you have to do it earlier in the stage and not wait for the final climb. We knew the chances weren't very high, but we just had to try, and we did,” Visma directeur sportif Grischa Niermann said afterwards.

“I didn't get the impression he was about to collapse, but we have a plan and we're going to stick with it. You can’t just say after two minutes, 'We're quitting now.'”

At the very least, it isolated Pogačar from his remaining teammates, while Vingegaard had Jorgenson for company when they bridged up to the break. Advantage Visma? They certainly rode as though that were the case, with Jorgenson leading the charge into the headwind down the descent of the Madeleine and, so it seemed, taking Pogačar’s UAE teammates out of the equation altogether.

But Visma’s best-laid theoretical plans soon came up against the reality of their physical limitations. Jorgenson is a fine rider with genuine potential as a Grand Tour contender, but he has been subdued on this Tour and his struggles continued here. It was clear that he would be of scant value to Vingegaard on the final ascent of the Col de la Loze, and that seemed to inform the Dane’s next act.

Rather than have Jorgenson ride a brisk tempo in the long valley before the Loze, Vingegaard dispatched the American up the road with stage winner Ben O’Connor (Jayco-Alula) and Einer Rubio (Movistar). Soon afterwards, he and Pogačar sat up and waited for the chasing group, which included the teammates they had left behind on the Madeleine. In other words, Vingegaard checked down from option one and moved to the back-up plan. Advantage Pogačar.

Even so, Visma tried again on the Col de la Loze, even if the pace-making of Simon Yates and Sepp Kuss was noticeably more laboured than it had been on the Madeleine. This time, they weren’t really hurting Pogačar’s remaining teammates, far less the man himself.

Two years ago, when the Tour climbed the Col de la Loze (albeit by a different route), Pogačar was dropped even before Vingegaard launched his own attack, and his concession “I’m gone, I’m dead” would be immortalised in t-shirts and banners by Danish fans on the 2024 race. This time out, there wasn’t the drama of sudden death on the Col de la Loze, just a continuation of the long, lingering expiry of Vingegaard’s hopes of winning this Tour. 

The race seemed run when UAE took up the pace-making for Pogačar 5km from home, but Vingegaard still had enough defiance left to attack inside the final 2km. The problem, as ever, was that Pogačar responded with ease.

In fact, it was hard not to feel like each man was now cast in the opposite role to the one he played in Vingegaard’s first Tour victory in 2022. Back then, Pogačar and a more limited UAE squad repeatedly tried to break Vingegaard’s resistance, but the Dane always had his rival’s number and, when it mattered, he could drop him too.

This time out, Pogačar is the one who parries all Vingegaard’s jabs with apparent ease and then catches him on the chin just before the bell. Inside the final kilometre of the Col de la Loze, Pogačar eased his way clear of Vingegaard to add another 11 seconds to his overall lead. Small change in the grand scheme of things, but a more significant transaction from a psychological standpoint.

After 18 stages of the Tour de France, Pogačar’s lead over Vingegaard is 4:26. The bulk of that deficit came from the Hautacam summit finish and the two time trials, but the more glaring illustration of Pogačar’s dominance comes from the sobering fact that Vingegaard hasn’t managed to gain so much as a second on Pogačar since the race left Lille.

The anticipated knockout blow from Pogačar hasn’t arrived just yet, even if Hautacam was certainly a knockdown and a long count for Vingegaard on the canvas. But like Floyd Mayweather in his pomp, Pogačar hasn’t needed to stop the fight. He’s been winning on the scorecard all the way and, as things stand, will claim victory by a unanimous decision in Paris on Sunday.

Still, Vingegaard and Visma still have one more round left to try to take Pogačar down with a late haymaker. “The Tour isn’t over,” Vingegaard insisted on Thursday evening, pointing to stage 19 to La Plagne, which takes in the Col des Saisies, Col du Pre and Cormet de Roseland ahead of the hors categorie haul to the finish.

Deep down, Vingegaard must suspect there’s nothing to be done. But he’ll do it anyway.