'I ran out of gears' - Jonas Vingegaard strikes blow against Tadej Pogacar in Critérium du Dauphiné time trial

Remco Evenepoel was the day’s big winner at the Critérium du Dauphiné, but Jonas Vingegaard wasn’t far behind him. The Dane took second place behind an unassailable Evenepoel in the stage 4 time trial and he dealt a blow to eternal rival Tadej Pogacar in the process.

The world and Olympic champion Evenepoel was always likely to take the spoils here, and so much of the day’s intrigue would come from the relative displays of Vingegaard and Pogacar. Vingegaard produced a fine display, limiting the damage to 21 seconds to Evenepoel, while Pogacar was less sure-footed, coming home 48 seconds down in fourth place. 

In other words, Vingegaard gained 1.59 seconds per kilometre over Pogacar, a statistic that will surely make him look to the Caen time trial in the opening week of the Tour de France with increased optimism.

“I think to be honest I can be pretty satisfied with how today went,” Vingegaard said afterwards. “Remco is the best time triallist in the world, so to only lose 20 seconds on him in this time trial is pretty decent, I would say. And taking time on Tadej… In the end, I think I can be happy with my performance.”

The lone time check came after 10.5km, shortly after the short, sharp climb on the course. At that point, Vingegaard was 11 seconds down on the rampant Evenepoel, but he conceded a little more ground on the run-in to the line – a consequence, perhaps, of his gearing selection, even if he downplayed its significance.

“I didn’t have problems, I just ran out of gears a bit,” he said. “Maybe I should have had a bigger chainring on in the front. I don’t think it changed much, it was just that on one of the very fast parts, I needed a little bit of a bigger gear. But it’s not like I would have made it even five seconds faster.”

Vingegaard made a fast start to this Dauphiné with an attack in the finale of Sunday’s opener and his performance in the time trial offered a further indication that his lack of racing in the Spring has not affected his condition unduly as the Tour de France approaches. A truer test, of course, will come on three successive mountains stages in the final three days of the Dauphiné.

In the overall standings, Vingegaard is now fifth, 16 seconds behind Evenepoel but 22 ahead of Pogacar. His Visma teammate Matteo Jorgenson, meanwhile, is ninth at 39 seconds, and the American should prove a useful foil against Pogacar.

“Of course, it’s always better to be in front than behind, but on the other hand I’m also behind Remco,” Vingegaard said. “I also have some time to make up. In the last years we have seen that in the mountains you can make up a lot of time. It will be interesting in the upcoming four days.”