Teamwork makes the dream work - Key takeaways stage 16

The exposed, barren slopes of Mont Ventoux present one of the most enduring images at the Tour de France, and whenever the intimidating ascent appears on a race route, cycling fans know they are in for fireworks. 

This year was no different. After an explosive opening portion of the stage, during which UAE Team Emirates’ Nils Politt did his best to restrict riders from escaping the bunch, the team of the yellow jersey finally ran out of steam, and a substantial breakaway group were able to get away.

It was expected that Tadej Pogačar would want to fight for the stage win, but in the end, it was too late for the Slovenian to close the gap, treating spectators to two separate battles, one for the stage, and one for daily bragging rights between the leaders, as the mano-a-mano clash that defines the Tour de France continued up the torrid gradients of one of most iconic ascents on the planet.

He may be in arrears to his arch-rival by over four minutes, but there’s no sign of Jonas Vingegaard giving up on this Tour de France. Morale is still high in the Visma camp, and on rest day, Vingegaard stated he’d be prepared to lose second place, in an all-out raid to try and overturn his indomitable adversary. 

Of course, to say anything else wouldn’t look great – ‘never mind lads, we tried our best,’ heading into an incredibly tough third week of a Grand Tour is no way to show up for work. This kind of bullish optimism among the group could be seen as delusional, but they arrived at the race with a plan, knowing that what they were up against was probably the best version of Pogačar that has ever existed. 

While Pogačar comfortably put time into the Dane on Hautacam, and in the Peyragudes time-trial, today on Ventoux was a different story. It felt like a tipping point, in terms of the output of both riders. Where Pogačar had been dropping Vingegaard in week two, now he could not, save for two seconds on the line that are unlikely to be the deciding factor in this year’s Tour. 

Instead, Vingegaard struck first, continuing down the same route of attacking racing that we are growing more used to seeing from him. No, he couldn’t drop Pogačar either, and the two remained locked together for the second half of the climb, but with two gruelling Alpine stages lying in wait, it’s possible that we could see Vingegaard carry the momentum forward and actually find a way to claw back some of the lost time. It would take an almighty reversal of fortune for him to take back all of his deficit, but it’s within the realms of possibility that the race could end with a less daunting gap from first to second than we have currently.

Team tactics played a big role on the upper reaches of the ascent of Mont Ventoux today. A tried and tested formula for Visma | Lease a Bike, it was a canny move from the team to place Victor Campenaerts and Tiesj Benoot in the large front group that finally got away, having seen UAE tire themselves out for 60 kilometres trying to reign in all and sundry. This move paid dividends for the team as it so often has in the past, as first Benoot, then Campenaerts were on hand to offer some respite to Vingegaard on the Ventoux climb – even spacing themselves conveniently a couple of kilometres apart. It was a textbook move that may have ensured their leader had enough in the tank to neutralise Pogačar on today’s climb.

We also saw something remarkable from Soudal-QuickStep. With a kilometre left to the top of the climb, the stalemate between Ben Healy and Valentin Paret-Peintre looked set to last all the way to the line. Despite Enric Mas and Santiago Buitrago yo-yoing to the pair and dropping off again numerous times, it was clear that the two strongest riders were the Irishman and the Frenchman.

Enter from backstage, Ilan van Wilder. Yes, you read that correctly. Ilan van Wilder is in fact at this Tour de France. Not that you’d have known it, given his almost total invisibility up to this point. So invisible was van Wilder that I didn’t even notice him in the large group of riders that originally got away after about 60km. But he must have been there, to have been close enough to ride himself all the way up Ventoux, arriving with around 800m remaining in the jump-scare of the Tour so far, to offer some relief to his teammate – and the rest of the breakaway – by doing a turn on the front. The confidence boost and support enabled Paret-Peintre to out-kick Healy to the line, in what is the perfect example of a team victory. 

The resulting scenes, as Paret-Peintre fought through the crowds like a man possessed to get to Van Wilder to embrace and thank him was one of the most poignant images of the Tour, proving once again that cycling really is a team sport, and that Van Wilder’s effort meant the world. Basically, take on Ilan van Wilder in hide-and-seek at your peril.

It’s been a mixed Tour for the Belgian team, and it's the second Grand Tour in a row in which they have lost their GC leader, following Mikel Landa's early exit from the Giro d'Italia. 

Losing Remco Evenepoel was undoubtedly a major blow, and a derailment of the team's overarching plan coming into the race. Having said that, it freed up Paret-Peintre for a successful breakaway raid today, to make it four stage wins in total for the team – a quarter of the stages so far have been won by them. They have won two sprints with Tim Merlier, a time-trial with Remco before his health went downhill, and today’s mountain stage. It makes Soudal-QuickStep arguably the strongest all-terrain team at the Tour this year – and the second most successful, with the possibility of more to come. 

Voted the day’s most combative rider, after securing a brilliant second place on Mont Ventoux, Ben Healy was not even expected to be challenging for the win today, according to EF Education-EasyPost DS Tom Southam, but a late decision was made for him to go with the large breakaway group that got away.

Healy missed the move when Tudor attacked to form a lead group, and hovered in a chase group that was too big for its own good before taking matters into his own hands along with Paret-Peintre and a few more and heading off in pursuit of a group that would later fade, including Julian Alaphilippe, Thymen Arensman and the leader on the road for much of the climb, Enric Mas. 

From there, the games began. Healy’s reputation as a breakaway-driving machine precede him at this point, and there were several moments when the group, in its various iterations, tagged onto his wheel and hung there. Healy wasn’t having it. Where on stage 10 he was content to drag the group to the line, knowing the yellow jersey was the ultimate prize, today was about the stage win, and when Santiago Buitrago failed to do enough work for Healy’s liking, he gave him a piece of his mind, before dropping him like a stone and launching up the road with Paret-Peintre. 

It was cagey as they worked towards the peak, and though the leaders were playing with fire, with Pogačar and Vingegaard closing in behind, they had enough left in the legs to go for the line. Ultimately, Healy’s lack of kick to the line let him down, but he wasn’t far off, and while he’s known for his prowess on hilly stages, this is arguably his finest performance over a climb of this distance. 

The improvement in his racing nous combined with this continued upward trajectory in terms of his physical condition could mean Healy is evolving into a more complete rider, and one who could seriously challenge the very best in the bunch, going forward. One thing that’s for certain, while his aggressive racing style may sometimes come back to bite him, it is winning him fans, and prizes – his combativity award was his third of this year’s race.

It was an erratic climb for the Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe leaders. Roglič followed quite closely behind Pogačar and Vingegaard at first, before dropping back, and though it is difficult to tell how it unfolded as there just weren’t enough cameras to go around, it seems as if he went back to aid his teammate, Florian Lipowitz, who was struggling on the first long climb after rest day. 

Later on the climb, Lipowitz attacked to try and drop Oscar Onley, his closest rival for the white jersey, but after he succeeded in ousting Onley, he dropped once again, and was eventually ushered to the line by Roglič, who finished ahead of him in the end. The signs are good for the Slovenian, who was hanging around at the back of the bunch earlier in the day, prompting fears that he could have succumbed to the peloton cold that’s doing the rounds. While he may not have got what he came for from this race, his fans - and cycling supporters at large - will all be glad to see the five-time Grand Tour-winning veteran make it all the way to Paris, for the first time since his ill-fated 2020 edition.