The third consecutive mountain day for an exhausted Tour de France peloton which meant another Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar battle on the final climb. Despite UAE and Pogačar’s effort on Le Bettex nothing in GC changed amongst the two top guns.
This time Jumbo-Visma did not ride full gas for the whole day and a big breakaway with nearly 40 riders got a chance to fight for a stage win. The final climb, Le Bettex (7.7 km, 6.9%) suited Pogačar more than Vingegaard. Right before Le Bettex and the short descent, there was the steep Côte des Amerands wall (2.72 km, 9.96%). A 14 man GC group did that ‘warm-up’ climb at 6.53 ᵉW/Kg for 8:32 min.
Earlier in the stage there was a big crash in the peloton that might have influenced some of the riders, including Sepp Kuss who was knocked down by a spectator. This time it was UAE-Emirates who paced the whole climb hard and tested Jonas Vingegaard before the time trial on Tuesday. When there were three riders left in the GC group, Tadej Pogačar let go of Adam Yates’ wheel and was left alone with Vingegaard. Both started to go slow and were caught by Carlos Rodriguez. Pogačar was probably hoping for Vingegaard to attack and counter his move across to his satellite riders ahead of Yates and Marc Soler from the breakaway. Yates also is fighting for the podium as Jai Hindley is losing time in the mountains and Carlos Rodriguez in the 3rd position is not far away and is weaker than Yates in the Alpes so far.
Pogačar attacked Vingegaard but the Dane looked strong and did not struggle to respond to his rival’s attempts. They both did the climb in 18:25 min with 6.60 ᵉW/Kg. A strong effort considering it was not paced for the whole time and right before Le Bettex they did a hard effort on Côte des Amerands. They broke the climbing record which was previously owned by Chris Froome. In 2015 he did the climb in 19:09 min. Even Carlos Rodriguez was a second faster today than peak Froome.
Wout Poels won his first Grand Tour stage at age 35. The Dutch climber was exceptionally fast up Le Bettex and beat his closest breakaway rival Wout van Aert by over 2 minutes. Poels did Le Bettex in 19:40 min with 6.23 ᵉW/Kg, which is faster than many of the GC riders. The next stage will be a hilly time-trial where the leader's jersey might change if Pogačar is on fire.
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Well written, it should be one of the best time trials in Tour history.
Este par cuando no rompen records es porque estan en jornada de descanso.