Pogacar loses yellow but gains 'an hour and a half' at Tour de France

After keeping tabs on the break’s advantage through the opening half of the stage, UAE elected to allow the gap to yawn outwards in the finale. Mads Pedersen took the stage after fine work from his Lidl-Trek teammates Quinn Simmons and Mathias Vacek, while Torstein Træen (Uno-X Mobility) is the new yellow jersey. Pogačar drops to fourth overall, 7:53 off the maillot jaune.

“We knew if Trek would go in breakaway or such thing, that it would be probably a breakaway day,” Pogačar told Daniel Benson after the stage.

“Trek did a super good job. They had three riders in the front, and we kept it cool and calm, and we arrived to finish, I think without spending a crazy amount of energy.” 

UAE still had to police the peloton throughout the day, but Pogačar believed they managed to do so without depleting their reserves unduly, with Nils Politt, Tim Wellens and Florian Vermeersch sharing the workload.

“Obviously, when you need to pull because of the jersey, you spend a bit, but I think Nils, Florian and Tim were super good today, dividing the work,” Pogačar said. “I think we did good job and a good day overall.” 

The stage took place on another day of soaring heat in southern France, and Pogačar admitted that he had suffered from the conditions in the early part of the stage.

“When we started, I had a full headache and I was thinking this is going to be one long day,” he said. “But then we kept showering each other with water and it was okay.”

Træen’s stint in the yellow jersey means that Uno-X Mobility should be an alliance of circumstance for UAE in controlling the peloton in the days ahead. And although Pogačar will be expected to strike when the Tour reaches the Col du Tourmalet on Thursday, his deficit to Træen means it might be some time before he sees the yellow jersey again.

“I mean, obviously the goal is to take back the yellow jersey, but you never know,” Pogačar said. “They’re really good and now it’s quite a big gap, so we will see, no? We will fight, but I think they can keep the yellow jersey in the team for a long time.”

Pogačar was speaking to reporters while he warmed down on his time trial bike outside the UAE team bus. He acknowledged that the ad hoc nature of his media duties here was far less time-consuming than the podium protocol of the yellow jersey, but he downplayed the idea that it would have a major impact on his recovery.

“I think you cannot measure this, but some days probably it’s a lot of stress with media and some days it’s easy to do it,” Pogačar said. “It just depends on the day. It’s hard to tell. I’ve been a lot of times back on the podium and a lot of times doing all the extra work. Today will be one hour and a half less obligations, so that definitely helps with the recovery. 

“But I think now I’m also pretty used to doing all the podium stuff and we’ve got good protocol and I have good help around me, good people that help me to stay cool and calm and to recover as best as possible even when we have the podium.”