"It's over, I'm dead": Pogacar bursts and Vingegaard sentences the Tour in Courchevel

He opened his jersey all the way down, his chest bare, his glasses on his helmet, he detached himself from the earpiece and handed over his weapons as he never did in his career. “It's over, I'm dead,” he managed to admit. Defeat and victory at the same time, as thunderous as the greatness of the opponents. At the same time that Tadej Pogacar said goodbye to the Tour, Jonas Vingegaard looked back, as if incredulous at the crisis of his Nemesis. They hadn't even reached Meribel, the key point of the day, the hardest part of the endless Col de la Loze ahead.. At the finish line it took 5:45 minutes (7:35 already overall), an unsuspected, enormous distance. Another exhibition by the Dane, who only Felix Gall also deprived of the victory of a stage forever remembered. [Narration and statistics]

Such was the impact of Tuesday's time trial in Combloux, like a direct blow to the chin, that the day after, the great queen stage of the Tour, more than 5,000 meters of unevenness accumulated by the hot Alps, was sustained under the effects of the blow of vingegaard. A recital to put out all of Pogacar's fires, to freeze his momentum, to knock him down on the canvas, knock out. And the sentence towards the second consecutive Tour of the Dane, a walk already until Sunday in Paris. When his rival fell off the hook, only with the help of Marc Soler, the Jumbo Visma also activated all its power and the leader was climbing towards the summit supported by his companions, each one a spring.

He was hindered by a car in the middle of the ascent, he could not catch up with Felix Gall (the Austrian climber makes his debut on the Tour) or Simon Yates, Pello Bilbao (his performance was also enormous) got ahead of him on the final ramp of the altiport. What difference does it make. Vingegaard's distances from the rest were again from another era.

There was no battle from afar, not even remotely. If Pogacar harbored any hope of concocting a chaotic day, he soon received another blow, more moral than physical, with a fall shortly after the start. They hadn't even gone 20 kilometers when a 'sharpener' with Nans Peters ended the Slovenian on the asphalt, a strong blow to the hip and left knee. At his side, saving fatality, Vingegaard.

Gall, during the ascent to Courchevel. MARCO BERTORELLO AFP

“After Meribel”, the injured applicant had warned at the start of Saint Gervais, with an agonized face throughout the stage, at the yellow wheel of his rival who advanced with his joyful pedaling, without a sensation of effort, impeccable, straining both gregarious in the breakaway of the day, in which an ambitious Pello Bilbao was especially determined, who was going to star in a stupendous jump in the general classification. The calm of a uneventful day anticipated the storm, the explosion, the bird, who knows if affected by the fall or simply morally broken.

It was not going to be a pleasant day for Carlos Rodríguez either, who saw how the podium was too far away. The Ineos worked all day to control the leak, but when Sepp Kuss accelerated in the agony of Pogacar, Adam Yates held on. The British found the help of Majka later and led the Spaniard by 1:11 at the Courchevel finish line, where everyone entered as best they could, cycling from another era. A plethoric winner and a moving loser.