Pogacar’s Tour will not be the same without Vingegaard’s stubborn defiance

Cycling has always been a cruel business, and that old story repeated itself as fiercely as ever on a B-road outside Amancy on Sunday afternoon. Jonas Vingegaard thundered towards the climb of Plateau de Solaison still clinging to the forlorn hope that he could win the Tour de France. Seconds later, the illusion was shattered when his wheels slid from under him on an awkward right-hand corner just outside of town.

The first instinct in such situations is to jump back on the bike, but Vingegaard understood immediately that it was futile. He sat on the roadside clutching his right shoulder, waiting for the medics to confirm what the pain was already screaming at him. His collarbone was broken and his Tour was over.

Vingegaard’s exit from the Tour was in keeping with the stoical, almost introverted way he has always raced it. The Dane has never been especially triumphalist in victory nor visibly sour in defeat, and he was never likely to make a drama of this setback. He has always known the cost of his dreams and understood the bill could come at any time.

Within a couple of minutes, Vingegaard walked gingerly towards the waiting ambulance, a wince before entering his only concession to the agonies he was suffering. A smattering of spectators at the roadside applauded respectfully as the ambulance pulled away.

Up ahead, the Tour swept on without him. Vingegaard’s Visma Lease a Bike team had been setting the pace in the yellow jersey group in the hope he might test Tadej Pogačar on the final climb, but now they no longer had a cause to fight for. 

This version of Pogačar doesn’t look remotely as vulnerable as the foe Vingegaard defeated in 2022 and 2023, but that hadn’t stopped him from trying, just as he had done over the past two summers.

This time around, Vingegaard’s preparation for the Tour had taken him on a detour to the Giro d’Italia, and his crushing victory there had heightened the belief within Visma that he had returned to the condition he last held before his career-threatening crash at Itzulia Basque Country in 2024. The hope was that his form might – might – allow him to trouble Pogačar this July.

They must surely have been disabused of that notion across the dispiriting opening two weeks of this Tour. Victory in the opening team time trial was a false dawn, as Pogačar ran up the score on Vingegaard on the Col du Tourmalet and again at Le Lioran. 

Vingegaard has been blessed with the ability to be one of the finest Grand Tour riders in history yet condemned to race in the same era as one of the greatest cyclists of all-time. And yet Vingegaard has never refused his burden, and that was in evidence again this weekend.

Pogačar had already all but won the Tour on the Tourmalet on stage 6, but Vingegaard still refused to lay down arms. On Saturday, he forced the pace on the Col du Haag in an optimistic bid to discommode Pogačar, but even his best day of this Tour ended in frustration, as the Slovenian pilfered another minute to stretch his lead out to 4:30.

Even then, Vingegaard seemed to be railing against the evidence of the road. He seemed eager to repeat the dose on Sunday, setting his Visma teammates to work on the run-in to the climb of Plateau de Solaison. 

It would be unfair to roll out the old chestnut that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is a form of insanity. At its heart, endurance sport is an exercise in stubbornness. In the Pogačar era, nobody has been more admirably stubborn than Vingegaard. 

The Tour waits for no man, of course, and the bike race rattled on without Vingegaard. On the slopes of Plateau de Solaison, Pogačar seemed a touch subdued without his usual sparring partner, and he paid tribute to Vingegaard and their shared journey at the finish. For five years, they had occupied the top two places at the Tour, an unprecedented duopoly in the history of the great bike race.

“Maybe at the beginning we didn’t have the best relationship, but in the last two years, we became good rivals, good, respected rivals and competitors, but I also think kind of friends,” Pogačar said. “And yeah, the Tour will not be the same without him.”

Pogačar’s tribute was rather overshadowed, however, by his ill-advised attempt to link Vingegaard’s crash with the 2am visit he had received from anti-doping testers ahead of the stage. It was neither the time nor the place for a “just asking questions” intervention from the yellow jersey, as Vingegaard’s sports director Marc Reef diplomatically pointed out when Pogačar’s comment was put to him. 

“I think it’s not something to speculate about,” Reef said. “The boys were ready, he was ready, he was also feeling good during the stage.”

Vingegaard’s departure opens up a position as Pogačar’s foil on this Tour, and Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) stepped up to the mark with arguably the best climbing performance of his career. 

Evenepoel was the only opposition rider to live with Pogačar’s forcing on the hors catégorie haul up Plateau de Solaison, though it’s not entirely clear how much that owed to the yellow jersey’s attempts to tee up his teammate Isaac del Toro for victory.

But that’s a minor quibble. Evenepoel had too much for Del Toro in the final kick for the line, and by day’s end, he had also gained 1:08 on Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM) and – perhaps more pertinently – his Red Bull stablemate Florian Lipowitz.

In the overall standings, Evenepoel is second overall, five minutes behind Pogačar, but 58 seconds ahead of Del Toro, 1:23 up on Seixas and 1:48 clear of Lipowitz. With a 26km time trial to Thonon-les-Bains to come on Tuesday, Evenepoel will believe he can now finish second overall at this Tour, and his sheer force of personality will add considerable colour to a Tour that has at times risked playing out in grayscale.

But not even the most stratospheric time trial display will convince Evenepoel that he can remotely trouble Pogačar between now and Paris. Only Vingegaard could summon that obdurate belief despite all evidence to the contrary. The Tour will be a poorer spectacle in his absence.