It was the GC shoot-out many expected in Mûr-de-Bretagne, and once again at the Tour de France, it fell in the favour of Tadej Pogačar, leaving Jonas Vingegaard with the feeling he “could have been closer”.
The pair, who have shared the last five Tour titles between them, locked into a sprint finish at the summit of the town’s steep kicker, only 2km in length, but leg-sapping nonetheless. The win at its summit went to Pogačar, who extended his lead over his rival by four seconds to 1:17, thanks to his winning bonus seconds.
The Dane now sits fourth on GC, Pogačar first, with the mountains looming next week.
“Normally I would say I am happy with second, but I think I made a few mistakes there in the sprint, in my opinion,” Vingegaard said afterwards. “You never know if it would have changed anything but if you make a small mistake, you want to do it differently.”
Pogačar was the first to unleash his kick on the climb, the race’s first categorised finish. “If I started my sprint a second or two earlier, I could have been closer at least,” said Vingegaard. “You never know.”
Speaking after Thursday’s sixth stage, the Visma-Lease a Bike rider explained he hadn’t expected the first week of this year’s Tour to be so intense.
The first significant GC gaps came in Wednesday’s time trial in Caen, where Vingegaard placed 13th, losing over a minute to Pogačar that he will now need to make up if he is to contest for the yellow jersey.
“You can have a bad day – I had a bad day in the time trial – and normally I don’t have bad days, so it wasn’t nice. But I still I believe in myself, and that we can make a difference in the second or third week,” he said.
“It has been seven GC days already, six at least. It has been a hard first week, and I will be curious to see what it does in the third week when you look at it generally. It is a really hard Tour this year.”
The Tour de France continues over the weekend with two flat stages, both expected to finish in bunch sprints. The race's first official 'mountain' day comes on Monday, stage 10, and finished at Le Mont-Dore.
