It was the hardest stage of the Tour so far, with several hard climbs and the finish up Superbagneres, first time used since 1989 Tour.
Oscar Onley before the final climb spent 4286 kilojoules for 4:22h at 16.98 kj/kg/h. The peloton did 5.5 ᵉW/Kg for 54 minutes on Col du Tourmalet, 5.7 ᵉW/Kg for 14 minutes on Col d’Aspin, and 5.7 ᵉW/Kg for 22 minutes on Col de Peyresourde. With them being at a higher altitude, it made the stage even harder. Remco Evenepoel, after feeling bad on the previous stage, dropped out of the race with Mattias Skjelmose, while Matteo Jorgenson lost 19 minutes.
It was one of the rare opportunities for breakaway riders to go for a stage win on a mountain day, as UAE Emirates did not have enough firepower to bring back Thymen Arensman, who had a 3 minute lead before Superbagneres. After an incredible performance yesterday, Tadej Pogačar also was not feeling great and did not attack, despite targeting every mountain stage, with Arensman winning the first stage for INEOS in the Tour de France in a while. Pogačar, in the 2024 Tour, in a similar case, caught Jorgenson on Isola 2000, doing one of the greatest climbing performances and burned the huge lead that the American had, but on Superbagneres he was missing his usual legs.
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Felix Gall attacked early from the GC group and did the highest performance with 6.22 ᵉW/Kg for 33:08 min at a medium altitude. Jonas Vingegaard, who was pulling more than Pogačar but could not drop the Slovenian, did 6.17 ᵉW/Kg, while Pogačar saved his legs in the draft and was the fastest out of anyone with 6.13 ᵉW/Kg. Thymen Arensman, after a close call against Simon Yates on stage 10, did 5.94 ᵉW/Kg for 34:54 min. It was quite an impressive performance, as even Primož Roglič, who yesterday in a mountain time-trial generated an extremely high level performance after a hard stage the day before, produced a less impressive effort with less fatigue than Arensman, who was in an early breakaway.
Thanks for posting the numbers from today’s stage! Will you also post them for yesterday’s one?
Hilarious that you don’t post the numbers from stage 13… Pogacar put up the best mountain ITT ever
Hi LR, thanks for the analysis! Are you planning on analysing the ITT from stage 13? Onley apparently did 6.5w/kg for 25 min (2.06min slower than Pogacar). I am guessing that Pogacar did around 7.2w/kg for 22min?
Keep up the good work!
Why would Pogacar chase ? He has 4 minute lead. Vinegard is obligated to attack which he did with 3km ? to go. Seemed like Tadej’s legs were just fine at the finish. I think Pogacar is just much wiser with a few years under his belt. Pretty obvious that Ventoux is the prize he has his eyes on.
Hi LR, thanks for all the great analysis! I also wanted to ask about the stage 13 ITT. I’ve seen a few quite different w/kg being thrown about for Pogacar’s performance and was wondering what you guys thought.
Would love to know about the TT as well. My guess was 24:30 total for the winner but it was even faster.
The real question is will pogacar break the climbing record for ventoux. I feel like that’s the way this is headed