Campenaerts: Pogacar and UAE are irritated by Visma tactics

Visma | Lease a Bike’s stage 10 performance threw a first punch at Tadej Pogačar’s Tour de France defence, but it was well parried by the Slovenian.

The Dutch team took the stage win with Simon Yates and isolated Pogačar from his UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammates, even frustrating him as the race reached the mountains and Le Mont Dore Puy de Sancy. However, they have not yet landed a telling blow, their leader, Jonas Vingegaard doing nothing but mark his rival, making no effort to take time.

UAE Team Emirates-XRG started the day on the back foot, with João Almeida forced to abandon on Sunday’s stage, and another key domestique, Pavel Sivakov suffering from illness. 

In response, not only did Visma | Lease a Bike put Yates and Campenaerts in the break, they attacked Pogačar repeatedly, sometimes with Sepp Kuss, who began the day way down on GC, but more tellingly with his American compatriot, Matteo Jorgenson, who started the day 1:34 behind the overall lead. Each of his jabs forced Pogačar to chase, with Vingegaard following.

And it is this persistent tactic which Visma believe will further erode his team’s physical resilience and has already got under the skin of the three time winner.

“I have the impression he gets irritated, or the team gets irritated because we try so hard," Campenaerts told TNT Sport at the finish of Monday’s stage. “But we have to be honest, he’s the best rider in the peloton, he’s the best rider maybe of all time, so it’s very hard to counter him, but we try as hard as possible, and we think with Jonas is best chance to beat him. It will be extremely challenging but we still have about 11 days to come and we will try a lot more.”

Pogačar himself admitted his frustration to Slovenian media; “They were a bit annoying with all the attacks, so I decided to make a better attack.” Vingegaard followed that move too, holding the wheel to the line. 

Recognition that Pogačar and his team are frustrated adds strength to the theory that Visma | Lease a Bike recognise his strength and the only way to beat him is by patiently eroding his team. Campenaerts, though, was complimentary about UAE’s tactics. 

“I have to say UAE was smart today. In the past stages they were really using a lot of force making sure we are not in the breakaway. I think today they said Pavel was not having a super good day and Almeida had gone home, so maybe tried to be a bit conservative. They let the breakaway go from the very beginning, and that was not really what we wanted,” Campenaerts said.

“When that happened we didn’t want to change a good situation, we also wanted to win the stage.”

Campenaerts was one of those who made their way into the day’s breakaway with Yates, though the two had differing roles, with the British rider concentrating on winning the stage, while Campenaerts was to assist when the GC group arrived on his wheel. 

“Simon said ‘I don’t know if I have the legs’ but in the end he had the legs. We had a bit of tactics, but on the two final climbs it was just the legs speaking and Simon must have been really strong.”

With the Tour taking a well-earned rest day on Tuesday, Vingegaard, Pogačar and their the two teams at least have time to recover before rejoining battle on Wednesday’s punchy stage starting and finishing in Toulouse.