On Pogacar’s watch, even the Tour’s escape artists must be elite

The rolling profile through the Corrèze was too demanding for the fast men and not hard enough for the GC contenders. In generations past, that kind of terrain would have lent itself to an early break amassing a winning lead while the podium contenders ambled home far behind them.

In the Tadej Pogačar era, every day seems to be an opportunity for UAE Team Emirates-XRG to impose their rule on the peloton. On Sunday, their efforts at the head of the peloton ensured that the strongest break of the Tour so far never had much more than a minute in hand on their pursuers.

By day’s end, stage winner Mathieu van der Poel and the last men standing from the break had just six seconds to spare over the yellow jersey group. 

True, Netcompany-Ineos performed the bulk of the chasing in the finale, but the stage win would never have been on Filippo Ganna’s radar had UAE not made it possible with their fearsome pacesetting earlier in the afternoon. And it says something about UAE's depth that Pogačar had five of his teammates for company in a 35-strong yellow jersey group. 

Afterwards, UAE general manager Mauro Gianetti insisted that his team had been riding simply to control the race rather than to chase another stage victory. “We were not chasing, we were just making a good pace because the moment we slowed down again, everybody was attacking, so it was necessary to keep a good pace and slowly, slowly let go the break,” Gianetti told Wielerflits.

A “good pace” is something of a euphemism for drilling along at an average speed close to 45kph on terrain as rugged as this, and Gianetti’s version of events wasn’t entirely corroborated by his riders. While UAE’s management might have been happy for the break to establish itself, it seems that the men out on the road had other ideas.

“The sports directors said we could let the gap grow much more, but Felix [Großschartner] and I were feeling good. I did not want to give away all those minutes for free,” Tim Wellens told Sporza, admitting that they were riding partly with a possible stage win for Isaac del Toro in mind.

Whatever the true reason for UAE’s pace-making, the end result was the same. At one point, the break featured Van der Poel, Tom Pidcock, Tobias Johannessen, Alex Baudin, Derek Gee-West, Quinn Simmons, Lennert Van Eetvelt and Pablo Castrillo, but their (considerable) combined watts still didn’t suffice to carry them fully clear of Großschartner and Tim Wellens.

Even on a day that ultimately just about fell to the break, Pogačar’s retinue seemingly couldn’t resist offering up another flex, another chilling reminder that they direct all the traffic on this Tour.

As the names above indicate, there was nothing soft about the break here, and the winnowing process was completed by Van der Poel when he unleashed a fierce acceleration on the short, sharp climb of Mont Bessou with 25km remaining.

Only Pidcock, Johannessen and Baudin could come with him, and that quartet was compelled to ride cohesively in order to fend off the chase behind. Unlike the transitional days of yore, there was no scope for games of cat and mouse, and precious little chance of the win falling to anyone other than the strongest of the four.

Pidcock will rue the mechanical issue that left him stuck in the wrong gear for the sprint, but the Briton was magnanimous enough to concede that Van der Poel was always going to be a difficult out in a situation like this.

Van der Poel’s breakaway companions even forced him onto the front in the final kilometre, but, as his compatriot Johan Cruyff used to put it, every disadvantage has its advantage. By riding at the front, Van der Poel was ultimately able to dictate the length of the sprint. 

A less experienced rider might have panicked and kicked from distance, but Van der Poel had the sangfroid to gauge the gap to the chasers and slow the pace accordingly, correctly judging that he could leave his acceleration until just outside the final 200m.

Although Van der Poel has raced the past six editions of the Tour and enjoyed spells in the yellow jersey, the race has always seemed more of a duty than a diversion for a man whose first loves are the mud and cobbles of winter and spring.

The white heat of July has never been to Van der Poel’s liking, and Sunday’s victory was ‘only’ his third stage victory at the Tour. Indeed, the soaring temperatures had contributed to Van der Poel’s relatively subdued start to the Tour, but he showed distinct signs of life with two thunderous lead-outs for Alpecin-Deceuninck teammate Jasper Philipsen over the past two days.

Van der Poel often gives the impression that he draws more pleasure from that supporting role than chasing personal success in July, but his talent condemned him to try on a stage like this. And after some difficult experiences in recent summers, he had deliberately incorporated heat training into his regimen to steel himself for days such as these.

That work paid dividends on Sunday, but only just. In the modern Tour, the transition stage is not what it used to be. And in the Pogačar era, even the escapees themselves need to be from the peloton’s elite.