Pogacar's serene march to Tour victory complicated by UAE illness crisis

Orcières-Merlette was the site of the greatest insurrection the Tour de France has ever seen, when Luis Ocaña temporarily toppled Eddy Merckx in 1971. Ocaña’s crash on the Col de Menté a few days later meant his would be an unfinished symphony, but the exploit remains an indelible chapter of Tour history, a reminder that even the most dominant champions can be challenged. 

There would be no repeat of that uprising when the race returned on Thursday afternoon, with Tadej Pogačar’s closest rivals all riding dutifully to the finish line in the company of the yellow jersey despite his relative isolation in the finale. 

Rumours of illness in the UAE Team Emirates-XRG camp have crystallised into fact over the past 24 hours, and it was striking that Pogačar had only Isaac del Toro for company in the group of a dozen or so riders that tackled the final climb together. 

By then, an ill Brandon McNulty had already abandoned the Tour after he was surprisingly dropped on the day’s opening climb, and Pogačar’s rivals would have been increasingly aware of his team’s travails as they pedalled towards Orcières-Merlette. 

For the second day running, Adam Yates betrayed signs of suffering, coming in more than 28 minutes down, while Tim Wellens barely made it home inside the time cut, reaching the summit more than 43 minutes behind stage winner Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost).

UAE’s muted showing in the Alps contrasts with their full-throated displays through the opening two weeks of the race. Pogačar’s Tour-defining attack on stage 6 to Gavarnie-Gèdre came after Felix Grossschartner, McNulty, Yates and Del Toro had shredded the GC group on the Col du Tourmalet.

In the days that followed, UAE continued to dictate the terms of engagement, at times seemingly for the sheer hell of it. Mathieu van der Poel’s dramatic victory at Ussel on stage 9, for instance, was almost thwarted by a rather needless flex from UAE on a day that didn’t really lend itself to GC riders.

Pogačar’s subsequent solo wins at Le Lioran and Le Markstein put the race still further beyond reach, and Jonas Vingegaard’s abandon on stage 15 seemed to mark the formal end of the Tour as a contest. The two-time winner was the only rider other than Pogačar who set out from Barcelona with genuine aspirations of wearing yellow into Paris. The rest, Remco Evenepoel included, struggled from the outset even to pay lip service to the idea.

After outsprinting Pogačar to win atop Plateau de Solaison and again after beating the Slovenian in the stage 16 time trial, Evenepoel was adamant that holding onto second place overall was the very summit of his ambition on this Tour.

Events at Orcières-Merlette suggest that Evenepoel wasn’t engaging in false modesty. Pogačar was divested of his teammates, but Evenepoel still didn’t see fit to test if the illness in the UAE camp had spread to the yellow jersey himself.

His Red Bull teammates Maxim Van Gils and Jai Hindley set the tempo at the front of the yellow jersey group on the climb, but the team’s posture was defensive rather than offensive. Their brisk but steady pace was designed not to put Pogačar in difficulty but to ensure that nobody attacked Evenepoel’s second place on GC.

“The stage victory was out of reach anyway,” Van Gils told Sporza afterwards. “We didn’t want to ruin our legs for a tenth place and a few seconds.”

In truth, there was probably little more that Evenepoel could have done at Orcières-Merlette. The climb itself, though rated category 1, is a relatively gentle one, with an average gradient of 6.7%, and when the Tour last came here in 2020, a 20-strong group of overall contenders contested the finish. Evenepoel wasn’t the only man to deduce there was little to be gained from aggression here, not least because of the arduous road ahead in the next two days, which feature successive summit finishes at Alpe d’Huez.

“I think it was a day that hurt everyone’s legs a bit, but the aim was above all to conserve energy,” Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA GCM) said, according to L’Équipe. “The next two days are going to be very tough, and that’s where the Tour will be decided, at least as far as the podium is concerned.”

Pogačar has a hefty safety net of 4:32 over Evenepoel and 7:11 on Seixas, but the terrain is demanding enough for a man to nosedive rapidly if he runs into turbulence in the Alps. Vingegaard, if he were still here, wouldn’t have needed a second invitation to test Pogačar and UAE’s strength on the Alpe doubleheader, but it’s not clear if Evenepoel and Seixas will race with the same ambition. 

“We still have to see about that. I’m not going to take crazy risks that would jeopardise my second place,” Evenepoel told Sporza on Thursday evening, though he wondered if Seixas – 20 seconds off Del Toro’s third place – might be a more willing attacker.

“Personally, I think a team like Decathlon will pull out all the stops now to challenge Del Toro for third place, and that’s a way of testing whether he is also suffering from illness.”

The opening kilometres of stage 19 should be revealing on that score. UAE kept a tight grip on the Tour’s early breaks across the first two weeks, but now it seems they can no longer exert anything like the same control over the race. The opening hour on Friday could be anarchical.

With McNulty out, with Yates and Wellens clearly ill, and with Florian Vermeersch carrying an injury, even Pogačar acknowledged that his team would be in conservation mode on Friday. “We’ll survive the stage tomorrow and try to come to Alpe d’Huez and then see what we can do,” Pogačar said.

Pogačar’s own health is the most important part of the puzzle, of course. UAE insist that the yellow jersey has not been affected by illness to date, and his strength is such that he would ordinarily be able to resolve any issues even without a full supporting cast. 

But Pogačar and UAE will surely face a more robust examination on the road to Alpe d’Huez on Friday than they did at Orcières-Merlette, with the Col Bayard and Col du Noyer featuring early in the stage.

The Col du Noyer, incidentally, is where Ocaña launched his immortal 1971 attack. Evenepoel, Seixas and the rest will set out from Gap still racing for second place, but they will surely be scanning for signs of weakness from the yellow jersey and his team on the Col du Noyer. 

Pogačar’s strength has already settled all debates at this Tour, but that doesn’t mean his rivals won’t ask questions if the opportunity arises.