Tadej Pogacar’s early gift sends ominous message to Tour de France rivals

The Tour, so the old adage goes, is won with the head and the legs. Pogačar clearly had the legs to win stage 2 in Barcelona, but perhaps he felt that ostentatiously slowing to cede victory to his teammate Isaac del Toro would weigh more heavily on the minds of his rivals.

Whatever the motivation, this was a considerable flex by Pogačar and his UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad. The margins were minor – Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel both finished on the same time – but the gesture was a major one.

In the first week of recent Tours, Pogačar has raced for every available second and battled for every imaginable inch in his endless contest with Vingegaard. In that kind of guerrilla warfare, every hill and every twist in the road seemed to be a potential battleground.

On the rise to the line in Barcelona on Sunday, Pogačar had a clear chance to snatch at least 10 bonus seconds on his old rival. The Pogačar of 2023 would likely have tried to rip clear of Vingegaard in the closing metres, eager to eke out any advantage, but he was content to temper his effort here to ensure Del Toro enjoyed his moment of glory.

Del Toro had attacked ahead of the final rise to the line, and although Pogačar accelerated within sight of the finish, it was clear that he was riding with the handbrake on. He repeatedly checked back over his shoulder, keeping tabs on Vingegaard and Evenepoel, rather than simply putting his head down and striking for home.

Like the Olympic Stadium by the finish line, which so often featured empty spaces during FC Barcelona’s recent tenancy, Pogačar wasn’t operating at anything like full capacity here. Even so, he outpaced Vingegaard et al. with apparent ease. 

The main objective may have been to gift a stage win to his teammate, but the psychological blow dealt to his GC rivals by racing with such nonchalance was surely a welcome byproduct of his largesse.

It came at the end of an afternoon where UAE Team Emirates-XRG had already dictated the terms of engagement at the head of the peloton. They took up the reins shortly before the first climb to Begues with 80km to go, and they began to up the ante still further on the first of three laps of the finishing circuit around Montjuïc.

Brandon McNulty, back at the Tour for the first time in four years, played a starring role here. The American spent 25km on the front as he controlled affairs over the first two ascents of Montjuïc, while the reduced peloton braced itself for what looked like an inevitable onslaught from Pogačar.

It hardly mattered that it never materialised. The very prospect of it was enough to intimidate the GC contenders of the Tour into anxious subordination, at least until the final time up Montjuïc, when some mangled communications from the Decathlon CMA CGM team car saw Tiesj Benoot set a supersonic pace even though his leader Paul Seixas had no intention of launching an attack.

McNulty had swung off by then, but Pogačar still had control of the situation, with Adam Yates cruising to the front and setting the tempo on the steepest portion of the climb. Over the other side, Del Toro found himself off the front after chasing down an attack from Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek). 

It might not have been specifically in the day’s playbook, but it clearly wasn’t contrary to the overall plan either. Pogačar rubberstamped his approval by refusing to hunt down his young teammate in the closing metres, instead crossing the line with his arms aloft. 

The bonhomie between the leader and his super domestique beyond the finish line appeared to be entirely genuine. While Juan Ayuso may have left UAE last year due to his resistance to a Pogačar-centric view of the world, Del Toro seems to accept his place in the hierarchy without a flicker of dissent.

Even when he won the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes last month, Del Toro was quick to insist that his sole duty at the main event would be to ride on behalf of Pogačar. Barring a dramatic turn in the circumstances of the race, there seems to be little prospect of internal strife here. Del Toro, now fourth at 16 seconds, looks a useful foil rather than a potential enemy within. The vibe is decidedly more Induráin and Delgado than LeMond and Hinault.

With that in mind, Pogačar seemed eager to give the Tour debutant an early reward for his loyalty in Barcelona. So much the better if his gesture struck a blow to the psyche of his rivals too.

Yet despite Pogačar’s early flex, Vingegaard and Evenepoel still have reason to be pleased with how they managed the finale of this stage. Before the start, Vingegaard acknowledged that the punchy finale wasn’t exactly tailored to his strengths, and he knew his afternoon would be about absorbing the ferocity of Pogačar’s acceleration in the finale.

Vingegaard resisted relatively well, limiting his losses on the world champion to six bonus seconds. He remains in the yellow jersey after his fine showing in the opening team time trial, and he retains a lead of six seconds over Pogačar.

The Dane has always been of the belief that the Tour is an endurance race won by minutes rather than seconds. Losing half a dozen seconds on here won’t throw out Visma’s calculations for this Tour, as sports director Marc Reef indicated afterwards: “He’s just there, and we’re happy with that.” 

There were encouraging signs for Evenepoel, too, as he sprinted to third place on the stage. The Belgian felt he might even have won were it not for a moment’s hesitation in the finale, but he moves up to third overall, 15 seconds off Vingegaard. 

Perhaps as pertinently, he is already 30 seconds clear of his Red Bull stablemate Florian Lipowitz. Twelve months ago, Evenepoel’s ill-starred Tour was prefigured by sloppy time loss on the opening weekend. This time out, he has looked razor sharp, though the real test will come in the high mountains.

For others, the stage turned into an exercise in damage limitation. Seixas recovered from a puncture, a near-crash and a tactical misstep to come home just three seconds down on the front group, which leaves him sixth overall at 42 seconds.

The aim of the game at this early juncture is surviving to fight another day. But Pogačar and UAE’s show of force here might have been an ominous portent of what’s still to come.