Arensman solos to misty Superbagnères win as Pogacar, Vingegaard trade blows
On a demanding day in the Pyrenees, Thymen Arensman claimed victory from the break at Superbagnères, while Tadej Pogacar controlled Jonas Vingegaard's efforts to retain yellow. Remco Evenepoel abandoned the race after cracking on the Col du Tourmalet.
Thymen Arensman (Ineos Grenadiers) won stage 14 of the Tour de France at Superbagnères on a day that saw Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) maintain the yellow jersey while a distraught Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) abandoned the race.
The third day in the Pyrenees was an arduous one, and Arensman was part of the break of the day that formed on the Col du Tourmalet. The Dutchman punched his way clear of his fellow escapees on the penultimate ascent of the Col de Peyresourde, and he carried a lead of three minutes over the yellow jersey group into the final haul to the line.
UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad dictated the pace on the ascent to Superbagnères, and their approach was more restrained than at Hautacam two days ago, with Adam Yates leading Pogačar and a ten-strong group into the final 5km, where they still trailed Arensman by 2:20.
With 4km to go, Jonas Vingegaard (Visma | Lease a Bike) launched his most sustained attack of the Tour to date. Inevitably, Pogačar was the only man immediately able to follow, though Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) bridged up soon afterwards.
Lipowitz was shaken off when Pogačar himself kicked with 3km to go. Vingegaard held firm and then unleashed another acceleration of his own, but Pogačar always looked comfortable. The Slovenian duly ripped away in the finishing straight for second place, 1:08 down on Arensman, while Felix Gall (Decathlon-AG2R) took fourth ahead of Lipowitz.
In the overall standings, Pogačar is now 4:13 ahead of Vinegaard, while Lipowitz moves into third, 7:53 down.
How it unfolded
The third successive day in the Pyrenees offered a repeat of the route tackled by Greg LeMond and Bernard Hinault on the 1986 Tour. The long preamble to the Col du Tourmalet notionally gave the break a chance of forging clear, but the high speed and Lidl-Trek’s desire to tee up Jonathan Milan for the intermediate sprint doomed all those early efforts.
By the time Milan won the sprint at the base of the Tourmalet, his teammate Mattias Skjelmose had crashed heavily, and the Dane would abandon after a forlorn chase of the speeding bunch.
The lower slopes of the Tourmalet saw the peloton splinter into shards, and the most notable casualty was Remco Evenepoel, who was distanced almost as soon as the road began to climb. Although third overall before the day began, Evenepoel had struggled visibly on the first two days in the Pyrenees, and the trend continued here.
Two days ago, Evenepoel recovered remarkably well after being distanced early on the Soulor, but the Tourmalet’s sheer length did not allow for a reprieve. A baleful Evenepoel dropped more than two minutes off the pace, and he climbed into a Soudal-QuickStep team car shortly afterwards.
Out in front, Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious) danced clear and led over the mist-shrouded Tourmalet, almost two minutes clear of a chasing group that included Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility), Carlos Rodríguez, Thymen Arensman (Ineos), Ben O’Connor (Jayco-Alula) and the Visma pairing of Sepp Kuss and Simon Yates, while the yellow jersey group, led by UAE Team Emirates-XRG, was 3:30 back.
Kuss and Valentin Paret-Peintre (Soudal-QuickStep) slipped away from the chasers on the descent, and they closed to within 35 seconds of Martinez by the summit of the Col d’Aspin, while the Johannessen group trailed at 2:29 and the yellow jersey group at 4:00.
Martinez elected to wait for Kuss and Paret-Peintre over the other side of the Aspin, and that trio was in turn caught by the chasers at the foot of the Peyresourde. Martinez, Kuss, Arensman, Rodríguez, Johannessen, O’Connor, Einer Rubio (Movistar) and Simon Yates began the climb together, but UAE were now winding up the pace behind on behalf of Pogačar, with the seemingly indefatigable Nils Politt cutting the gap to two minutes before swinging off.
Midway up the Peyresourde, Arensman attacked with intent, splintering the break. The Dutchman was already a minute clear by the summit, while UAE’s pursuit relented as the climb drew on, with Pavel Sivakov unable to prevent the gap stretching out to three minutes.
At the foot of the climb to Superbagnères, Arensman was two minutes clear of the chasers, while Marc Soler took up the reins in the yellow jersey group, now 3:20 behind the lone leader.
It had looked for much of the day as though Pogačar was intent on annexing his fifth stage win of this Tour, but the anticipated onslaught on the final ascent never materialised. Instead, UAE were content to maintain a controlling brief, and the relatively even pace allowed Gall to attack from the yellow jersey group midway up the climb.
The GC race finally ignited 4km from the top when Vingegaard sprang onto the offensive. It was soon clear that his attacks could not trouble Pogačar, and the race leader’s own counter-punch didn’t distance his rival either.
From there, the pair rode together to the mist-shrouded summit, though Pogačar couldn’t resist snatching six seconds from Vingegaard – four on the road and two in bonuses – by accelerating within sight of the line.
Behind, Lipowitz gained 44 seconds on podium rival Oscar Onely (Picnic-PostNL) and 1:21 on his teammate Primoz Roglic. Lipowitz looks in pole position for the third step of the podium, while Pogačar looks as impregnable as ever with a week still to race.
