Professional cyclists are a modest bunch and prefer not to talk up their achievements for fear of disrespecting their rivals. But there are times when they have to drop the politeness and express their amazement. Stage five of the Tour de France was one of those moments.
Tadej Pogačar could stick to the usual script, but he would be acting disingenuous: the 33km flat time trial in and around Caen – just weeks after he produced a disappointing time trial performance at the Critérium du Dauphiné – went as good as perfect for him.
Second on the day to Remco Evenepoel, the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider's time gap to Jonas Vingegaard stretched out from eight seconds to 1:13. That was beyond anyone’s predictions. The world champion is now in yellow, and there’s already a sense of inevitability about proceedings.
“For sure I was surprised, I’m not going to lie,” the Slovenian said of his difference to Vingegaard. “I was not expecting to be so far ahead of him in this time trial.” In fact, Pogačar was forecasting that his great rival would perform better than him. “I was expecting him to be closer to Remco than me, but maybe he didn’t have the greatest day out there.” You don’t say.
What went wrong for Vingegaard is something for him and his Visma-Lease a Bike team to analyse, but Pogačar has a theory. “It was a flat TT and he’s the lightest of the three of us, so I guess he was not the best suited to the time trial," he said. "But it’s a bit unexpected to see these kinds of gaps.”
His UAE Team Emirates-XRG sports manager, Matxin Fernández, expressed a similar level of shock. “We knew that Remco was the favourite, and we also knew that Tadej was going to be a lot closer to Jonas than he was in the Dauphiné, but honestly Tadej has ridden an excellent time trial – Remco better, obviously – and Jonas, I don’t know what happened,” the Spaniard told Cycling Weekly.
“He has lost more time than we honestly predicted in our forecasts. I don’t know exactly why Jonas has lost so much time, but if you look at the numbers, data and facts, Tadej has always been one of the key players in Tour de France time trials.”
Of the nine TTs Pogačar has ridden in the Tour, he’s won three – including, famously, a penultimate day test in 2020 that secured him his first yellow – but few have been as impressive as this one.
He knows it, too. And it’s ominous for his rivals. “Today I had a really good rhythm from start to finish, and when I heard I was gaining time in the first 5km, I got more motivation. I’m really happy with today’s time trial and with my performance,” he said.
There is now no doubt that the 26-year-old is the overwhelming favourite to win the maillot jaune in Paris in two and a half weeks' time, but will he now be prepared to loan yellow to another team for a few days, with the mountains not arriving until Monday and then not reappearing until next Thursday?
“I don’t think we can say that we’re going to lose yellow – we’ve never before done it and we’re not going to do it now,” Fernández said. “If you can control and keep yellow, perfect, but if there is a difficult situation to control, then we’ll analyse in the moment. It depends a lot on the race situation.”
Stage six is by far the race’s toughest test yet, with more than 3,500m of elevation stacked into a 200km passage through the hills of Normandy. “It’s really hard,” Fernández added. “We need to see how much time there is to [Visma’s Matteo] Jorgenson and other riders that could do damage. It’s not only us two teams – Remco is second in the GC.”
Pogačar, too, preached caution. “I always have eyes on everybody, not just one guy,” he said. “You cannot discount any GC riders, up to the top 10 in the general classification. You always need to have them in mind.”
But Vingegaard, clearly wounded from his time trial show, is the man who Pogačar’s eyes are most trained on. He’s aware that Visma will be plotting a comeback. “Looking at the course, I think Jonas will try the most,” Pogačar continued. “He is the most hungry to gain time back. We saw he is in super good shape, his team is in really good form and they will try tomorrow or the next few days.”
Pogačar has a lead he wouldn’t have expected at this early juncture, and though the race is far from won, with three quarters still to go, he can afford himself a pat on the back. “I’m very happy. It’s important to be in yellow, but it’s most important to have it in Paris.”
