2023-07-18 23:55:34
Dane Jonas Wingegaard appears to have dealt a knockout blow to his Tour de France rival Tadej Pogacar of Slovenia on stage 16 of the most prestigious road race. Not only did he win the only time-trial race on the Tour schedule, but he won it, managing to beat Pogacar, who was almost on par with him in the general classification, who was not helped by the bike change trick, by more than a minute and a half. Wingegor’s lead is now so great that it can only be recaptured with the help of a magical combination of circumstances.
All the major media resources that pay increased attention to the greatest road race among – L`Equipe, BBC, The Guardian – were drawn, describing the outcome of the Tuesday cut, to provide it with some resounding definition – “sensational”, “shocking”. And it does not matter that formally there is nothing particularly sensational in the fact that the first place goes to one clear favorite of the Tour de France, and the second to another clear favorite, it seems to be not. But the feelings of those who came up with just such words can be understood.
This 22.4 km time trial between Passy and Combloux, a genre that always has a special status in stage racing, often defining, decisive, was certainly a sensation. In the sense that no one guessed what the balance could be in the struggle between the favorites, which until now, after all, was, as predicted, absolutely equal. They fought at almost every one of the dozen previous stages with varying degrees of success, and by the cutoff, Jonas Wingegaard of Jumbo-Visma, last year’s Tour champion, was almost ephemeral ten seconds apart from Tadej Pogacar of UAE Team Emirates, champion of 2020 and 2021. . And trying to guess what will happen on the route from Passy to Combloux, everyone, of course, remembered that Pogachar, when he really needs it, is always insanely strong in this specific discipline. Sometimes it seems that, seeing a goal in front of him, he can turn mountains in the cut and more abruptly than the Alps, where his next showdown with Vingegor brought him.
And it’s not to say that Tadey Pogachar had a bad day for cutting. Well, how could he be bad if, for example, he confidently, with a margin, outstripped a whole bunch of great specialists in such races, such as the Belgian Wout van Aert, who took third place, and the Spaniard Carlos Rodriguez, who showed brilliant form and freshness in the mountains, very quickly , as if not straining, caught up, although he went a distance two minutes ahead. No, Pogachar was himself, a smart racer capable of feats. Only Jonas Wingegaard that day was in some other, even in comparison with him, dimension.
The fact that in the first ten kilometers he won as much as half a minute from the Slovenian, those who were worried about Pogacar, could still be attributed to the difference in calculations: what if the Danish cyclist overestimated the possibilities and started too briskly? But the kilometers melted, and the situation remained the same. Backlog Pogachar grew and grew, going off scale in a minute. He fought not with his equal, but with someone an order of magnitude stronger and more resilient.
With a little over six kilometers to go, Tadej Pogacar decided to pull off the last trick up his sleeve, which is not really news to those who watch the Tour on a regular basis. We are talking about an option in the form of a replacement bike. Riders sometimes change from cars designed specifically for cutting, with improved aerodynamics, low landing, to more familiar ones, which they ride in other stages. These bikes are lighter by a couple of pounds, and, as a rule, if there is a long climb ahead, it is more convenient to storm it on them.
But the trick did not help Tadey Pogachar. To the finish line, Jonas Wingegaard rushed away from him by 1 minute and 38 seconds, and his superiority in the general classification is now so great that it is tempting to characterize him as reinforced concrete: this does not win back if exceptionally bad circumstances for the owner of the yellow leader jersey do not intervene in the matter. The intrigue, in fact, is still barely glimmering only because the participants of the Tour have five stages ahead of them, and among them there are mountain stages – heavy, with a chance to attack. Such as the one that will take place on Wednesday in the Alps – from Saint-Gervais-les-Bains to Courchevel.
#Jonas #Wingegaard #breaks #Tadej #Pogacar #Tour #France