'Smash as much as possible' - Radio-free Pogacar crushes mountain TT

No alarms and no surprises. Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) was the favourite to win the mountain time trial on stage 13 of the Tour de France, and he duly lived up to his billing with another dominant display at Peyragudes.

Pogačar came home 36 seconds clear of Jonas Vingegaard (Visma | Lease a Bike) to claim his fourth stage victory of this Tour and his 21st in total. His lead over Vingegaard in the general classification has yawned out to 4:07, and the Dane is now the only man within seven minutes of the yellow jersey with more than a week still to race.

The direction of travel was clear from Pogačar’s first pedal strokes. He was the quickest at both intermediate checks, and he bounced up the steep final ramps to claim the day’s honours.

“This time trial was quite a big question mark already in December for me, I wanted everything to be perfect,” Pogačar said. “The team delivered just in the final moments for everything to be on the top. 

“I was really targeting to go all-out from start to finish and try to smash as much as possible on the pedals. I almost blew up in the end. But I saw the timer on the top and it gave me an extra push because I saw I was going to win.”

Equipment choices were a preoccupation for all teams, and Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) opted for time trial machines. Pogačar was initially set to ride on a modified Colnago Y1RS but he ultimately opted for the machine that he has used through the Tour to date.

“This was the biggest decision to make – which bike today,” Pogačar said. “Obviously, we race on road bikes most of the year, 99% of the time we’re on the road bike. In the end we did the calculation, and I decided to be more comfortable. I was riding the last twelve stages on the same bike, and it worked well for me.”

The decision to go with the road bike didn’t slow Pogačar down on the flat opening section, and he was already four seconds up on Vingegaard as he began the climb. From there, it was another Pogačar exhibition, though he confessed to a moment of difficulty on the final approach to the summit.

“I decided to go without a radio, because the tactic was just all-out from bottom to top, so I was just relying on the screen at the time checks,” Pogačar said. “I saw at the first one I was already five seconds in green [ahead] or something. This gave me motivation. The second one was a bit bigger, so I knew it was a good pace and I knew I was doing a good time trial."

“Of course, I was thinking not to blow up in the last part. I almost did in the end but that from 3km to go until 2km to go, I took a deep breath, reset and dropped a little bit the power because I knew the last kick is super, super steep and I wanted to come to the last steep still with somewhat good legs.”

Something of an understatement from the man who has exhausted all superlatives.