Tour de France: Woods wins at the Puy de Dôme and Pogacar regains seconds at Vingegaard

2023-07-10 23:58:40

Thirty-five years later, the Tour de France has returned to the top of the Puy de Dôme. At the top of the volcano where a legend of the Great Loop was written in 1964 with the Anquetil – Poulidor duel, the Canadian Michael Woods (Israel Premier Tech) beat the American Matteo Jorgenson (Movistar) in the last kilometer.

The Canadian managed his business perfectly. Under the strong heat, he meandered wonderfully around the sleeping giant to come back to the American who was little rewarded for his efforts. Woods gave his team its first success on this Tour after 4h19′41 of effort. Coming out of nowhere, Pierre Latour offered himself a nice second place 24 seconds from the winner, in the face of Jorgenson’s beard who cracked.

But we weren’t waiting for Woods to raise our arms to the top. On the slopes of such a mythical place in the history of racing, where Eddy Merckx was hit by a foolish spectator in 1975, we expected a duel worthy of 1964 between Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar. Only, the two strong men of the Big loop let go of a morning break without giving the impression of wanting to hang the Auvergne monument on their hunting board. The yellow jersey peloton spent the day about fifteen minutes behind the various leading groups.

Very dispersed like “uncle gunslingers”, the peloton broke out on the first slopes of the volcano. The French leaders were scattered in all directions: Gaudu, Pinot, Alaphilippe and Bardet the regional of the stage gave up as soon as the road started to rise.

The big fight between Vingegaard and Pogacar did take place, but the two heavyweights spent part of the climb observing each other, testing each other. On the slopes deserted by the public to preserve the environment, Pogacar made a first attack 1500 m from the finish in the hardest part of the climb. The Dane showed a sign of weakness. The Slovenian took a little lead, Vingegaard limited the breakage. But if we equate the puy de Dôme to a boxing ring, the double winner of the Tour 2020 and 2021 won on points.

The Dane saved his yellow jersey but the strong man of the Tour, it may well be Pogacar again who takes the lead. In the standings, after a first third of the race and on the eve of the first day of rest, Tadej Pogacar is 17 seconds behind the Dane still in yellow. But the favorite for victory in Paris once again becomes Pogacar, which leaves the weight of the leader’s jersey to the outgoing winner. Between these two, the second part of the Tour promises.