Tadej Pogacar 'crushes' Jonas Vingegaard at Dauphiné, but Tour de France isn’t won yet – Analysis

Marc Madiot didn’t sugarcoat his analysis on the final day of the Critérium du Dauphiné. In the Groupama-FDJ manager’s eyes, Tadej Pogačar hadn’t just beaten Jonas Vingegaard at the Dauphiné, he had given himself a significant head start at the Tour de France to boot.

“He's hammering the nail into Vingegaard’s head. Pogačar has killed him mentally,” Madiot told RMC. “Look at Vingegaard's face on Saturday… Pogačar crushed him!”

The beauty of the tit-for-tat contest between Pogačar and Vingegaard over the years is that it’s so often been just too close to call. Every argument in favour of one could be met with a counterpoint on behalf of the other. Irresistible force, meet immovable object. Pogačar’s punch against Vingegaard’s endurance. Pogačar’s exuberance against Vingegaard’s calm. There was no wrong answer when choosing a favourite for the Tour.

This time out, the question is rather more clear-cut. After running up the score against a diminished Vingegaard in the third week of the 2025 Tour, Pogačar has already struck a weighty psychological blow three weeks before this year’s Grand Départ. At the Dauphiné, he dealt a most sound beating to a fit Vingegaard, thus establishing himself as the clear and obvious favourite to win the 2025 Tour. 

That’s all the more striking given the tight margins of their ongoing contest over the past four summers. The duel between Pogačar and Vingegaard is already the most statistically remarkable in Tour history, with the pair occupying the top two places in each of the past four editions. They have claimed two overall victories apiece in that period, and there is precious little to separate them in aggregate time over those four Tours either. 

With time bonuses included, Pogačar covered the 13,667.1km of those Tours 1:25 quicker than Vingegaard. If time bonuses are removed from the equation, however, Vingegaard is the aggregate ‘winner’ over the past four years, albeit by just three seconds. Too close to call, in other words.

In that light, it was a chilling week at the Dauphiné for Vingegaard and his Visma | Lease a Bike team. Although Vingegaard’s Spring was interrupted by a crash at Paris-Nice, his Tour preparations in May continued at full bore. The Dauphiné was a chance to measure himself against Pogačar in a dress rehearsal, and he came up very short. 

The psychological impact will be even more acute because the week started so well. Vingegaard sparked the winning move on the opening day with his surprising attack in the finale, and then he gained half a minute on Pogačar in the time trial. 

The tide turned abruptly on the two-part climb to Combloux on Friday, when Pogačar burned Vingegaard off his wheel with a seated acceleration and put a minute into him at the summit. He repeated the dose at Valmeinier 1800 on Saturday, and though the gap was just 14 seconds by the top, Pogačar seemed almost to make a point of easing up in the final kilometres. 

It wasn’t the only flex, as Madiot noted: “We saw Pogačar go back to his car to fetch water bottles to bring to his teammate – he’s teasing him!” It was a stark visual message, given that it came after Vingegaard’s team had shed Pogačar of most of his UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammates ahead of the final climb. Afterwards, Pogačar even showed disdain for how Visma had accelerated on a descent to distance his teammates.

On the final haul up Mont-Cenis on Sunday, meanwhile, Pogačar responded with disarming ease to Vingegaard’s acceleration and then made no attempt to outsprint him for second place. Even that gesture carried a message. Pogačar, the man with a seemingly unquenchable thirst to prove himself, seemingly felt that he had already made his point to Vingegaard, and the rest of us, too. 

The script for July looks like it’s already been written.  “If we're realistic and objective,” Madiot said, “there's no contest at the moment.”

And yet, and yet… The truths revealed by the Dauphiné don’t always hold up to scrutiny in the harsh light of July. The Tour is still three weeks away, and the Col de la Loze stage is almost six weeks from now. A lot can change in that space of time. At the very least, Vingegaard heads to Tignes this week with a checklist of things to work on during his final altitude camp ahead of the Tour.

While Vingegaard will be demoralised by Pogačar’s superiority at the Dauphiné, he will still be buoyed by his own track record at the Tour. Indeed, this taps into one of the key differences between Pogačar and Vingegaard. Pogačar, as he let slip before the Dauphiné, rides the Tour almost as an obligation. His talent compels him to race it – and win it – but his real passion lies in competing elsewhere. 

Vingegaard, by contrast, builds his entire season around the Tour every year. July is his raison d’être as a cyclist, and, while Pogačar is clearly the superior all-around bike rider, Vingegaard still has reason to believe that the specific demands of the Tour are better suited to his talents than to his rival’s. The thought might give him succour between now and July 5.

In particular, Vingegaard has shown patience at the Tour, picking and choosing his moments to strike. He tends to back his powers of endurance in the third week and his ability to cope with high altitude: the Col de la Loze stage in 2025 tallies perfectly with those strengths. His Visma team, meanwhile, should be more potent at this year’s Tour than last, with Giro d’Italia winner Simon Yates and a rejuvenated Wout van Aert joining his Dauphiné supporting cast. He was also notably better than Pogacar in the time trial at the Dauphiné.

The things within Vingegaard’s control, in other words, give him reason to hope. But one still senses that so much of his Tour hopes will hinge on what Pogačar does and doesn’t do. The Slovenian was impressive at the Dauphiné, but still with apparent margin for improvement according to eagle-eyed data sleuths.  

If Pogačar reaches a level beyond his 2024 Tour, then there is precious little Vingegaard can do to stop him next month. But if Pogačar falters as he did in 2023 or makes mistakes of hubris as he did in 2022, then Vingegaard can punish him, and then some. Even allowing for Pogačar’s current superiority, the alluring balance of their duel remains in place.

Pogačar is the overwhelming favourite, but everybody starts on the same time in Lille. The blow struck at the Dauphiné was a heavy one, but the Tour de France hasn’t been won just yet.