Tadej Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates dominated on the intensive Col du Galibier stage, with the Slovenian taking the yellow leader’s jersey and his 12th Tour de France stage victory at age 25.
It was the first real mountain test in the Tour de France. Usually, a high-altitude stage with the Col du Galibier downhill finish would be expected to be included in the second or third week of the Tour. UAE Team Emirates controlled the stage perfectly and did not allow the 17-man breakaway to gain more than three minutes. Oier Lazkano and David Gaudu were the strongest riders from the break, but as they could not work well together and attacked each other even when they had zero chance of surviving.
Nils Politt, Tim Wellens and Marc Soler were used as domestiques for the lower gradients on Col du Galibier with Pavel Sivakov being the first to pull on the steep part of the climb, which was 8.59 km at 6.79%. The shallow part was only 5% and the peloton averaged 26.7 km/h, so the GC riders pushed only 5.35 ᵉW/Kg for 20 minutes and the headwind made it easier to stay in the group. Ben Healy before the steep part of Galibier spent 2,871 kilojoules for 2:59h at 15.19 kj/kg/h. It was a very intensive and hard day as the peloton spent much time above 1,000–2,000 metres above sea level. When Pavel Sivakov started to pull on the steep section, good World Tour climbers like Simon Yates, Tom Pidcock and race leader Richard Carapaz began to drop early.
After Sivakov it was Adam Yates’ turn to pull followed by a UAE Team Emirates TTT up Galibier with Joao Almeida and Juan Ayuso switching in the front. Yates dropped from the group after his job was done while Ayuso and Almeida were probably thinking about their own GC and not sacrificing completely as it was possible to see them discussing at the front who should take over. UAE reduced the GC group to eight riders: Pogačar, Almeida, Ayuso, Vingegaard, Evenepoel, Landa, Roglič and Rodriguez. If Ayuso and/or Almeida had not stopped for a brief moment, Roglič and Landa possibly also would have been dropped, as they were struggling at the back of the group.
Pogačar attacked late on the climb with 800 metres remaining. Vingegaard almost closed him but cracked near the top and lost a few seconds. Pogačar averaged 6.28 ᵉW/Kg for 20:48 min on Galibier and improved Nairo Quintana’s 2019 record by 1:33 min. Pogačar could have gone faster if UAE paced it better and there was not a headwind, but it was still an impressive effort at a high altitude. For the whole climb, Pogačar averaged 5.80 ᵉW/Kg for 42 minutes. Vingegaard lost seven seconds at the top with 6.24 ᵉW/Kg, while Remco Evenepoel was the third-best climber, losing 14 seconds to Pogačar. Ayuso, Almeida, Landa Roglič and Rodriguez crossed the top together, losing 38 seconds in 800 metres. Ayuso and Almeida pulled on Galibier each for around two kilometres.
The shallow descent favoured Pogačar over Vingegaard, who improved his gap to the Dane. Vingegaard was later caught by the following group. Pogačar won the stage by 35 seconds and earned 18 bonus seconds at the top and finish, becoming the new GC leader. Evenepoel after getting passed on the descent by Roglič, Rodriguez and Ayuso finished second. Despite losing 45–50 seconds to Pogačar, Evenepoel and Vingegaard performed well on such a stage with their preparation due to the horrible Basque Country crash and the Tour de France definitely is not over as previous editions have shown.
Results powered by FirstCycling.com
considering that it’s a climb that goes from 2100 to 2600 m altitude, what are the normalized data for the elevation?
The datas of thé whole climb would be more significant.
“if UAE paced it better”? Are you kidding? They had 4 guys pacing Tadej. They controlled, dominated & paced perfectly. How do you do a better job than they did?
En los últimos km’s Primoz sufría por mantenerse a rueda, incluso se logró descolgar unos metros junto a Landa, en ese momento Almeida reclamaba a Ayuso por no colaborar y con ello se bajó un poco el ritmo lo que permitió a Primoz reconectar y sufrir un poco menos. No fue perfecto, venían muy bien pero pudo ser mejor.
80% Zone 2 training really does pay off