Saturday, July 13, 2024 at 5:29 PM
Tadej Pogacar has won the first Pyrenees stage of this Tour de France. The Slovenian, who suffered a mental blow three days ago, rode away from his main rival Jonas Vingegaard on Pla d’Adet.
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It took a while, but this Saturday the Tour de France headed back into the high mountains. After a flat approach phase of regarding seventy kilometers, the riders had to tackle the Col du Tourmalet (19 km at 7.4%) and the Hourquette d’Ancizan (8.2 km at 5.1%), before the final climb to Pla d’Adet (10.6 km at 7.9%) was still waiting. A day for the climbers!
Mathieu van der Poel is stirring
But due to the flat start, we first saw a few hard riders try. Victor Campenaerts attacked from the start and immediately had Mathieu van der Poel on his wheel. The rest of the peloton also responded immediately, which meant that the Belgian and the Dutchman were unable to create a gap. It took a while before a leading group did form. A group with Campenaerts once more, the very active Frank van den Broek and David Gaudu did gain a bit of a lead, but this escape attempt was also annihilated.
Teunissen also tried it a few times – photo: Cor Vos
Several more attacks followed, but it was only when Mathieu van der Poel got involved once more that it was a hit. The world champion rode away with Arnaud De Lie, Cedric Beullens (both Lotto Dstny) and Bryan Coquard (Cofidis). They were later joined by four more riders: Oier Lazkano (Movistar), Kévin Vauquelin, Raúl García Pierna (both Arkéa-B&B Hotels) and Magnus Cort (EF Education-EasyPost).
Leading group grows
The eight reached the foot of the Col du Tourmalet together, but in the meantime a second group was approaching. Among others Jasper Philipsen and Biniam Girmay, who were still fighting for points for the green jersey in the intermediate sprint. Girmay was just a bit faster and thus extended his lead in the side classification. While the two sprint bombs dropped back down followingwards, some of the other counterattackers made contact with Van der Poel and co.
Mathieu van der Poel in attack – photo: Cor Vos
Because some members of the original leading group had to drop out, including De Lie, we got eighteen men in front. In addition to Lazkano, Vauquelin, Pierna, Cort and Van der Poel, these were: Fabien Grellier (TotalEnergies), Alexey Lutsenko (Astana Qazaqstan), Louis Meintjes (Intermarché-Wanty), Simon Geschke (Cofidis), Victor Campenaerts (Lotto Dstny), Ben Healy, Rui Costa, Sean Quinn (EF Education-EasyPost), David Gaudu (Groupama FDJ), Marco Haller (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe), Bruno Armirail (Decathlon AG2R), Michal Kwiatkowski (INEOS Grenadiers) and Christopher Juul-Jensen (Jayco AlUla).
Col du Tourmalet in Hourquette d’Ancizan
On the Tourmalet, the leading group quickly thinned out once more, mainly due to the work of Sean Quinn. Mathieu van der Poel did not get into trouble. He reached the top with the first group of riders, just behind Oier Lazkano. The Spaniard had attacked just before the top and took the Souvenir Jacques Goddet with him. In the peloton, UAE Emirates controlled with first Tim Wellens and then Nils Politt. They made sure that the difference with the escapees, which had grown to four minutes, was reduced to three and a half minutes uphill.
At the foot of the Hourquette d’Ancizan (8.2 km at 5.1%), the ten remaining leaders still had three minutes on the peloton. After two kilometers of climbing, Van der Poel had to let his fellow escapees go. He was not the only one to fall off. At the top, we still had five riders at the front: Healy, Meintjes, Kwiatkowski, Lazkano and Gaudu. The latter reached the top first, ahead of Lazkano. In the peloton, Marc Soler had taken on most of the climb. The Spaniard really stepped on the gas, because the difference with the escapees had shrunk to just over a minute.
Healy holds out for a long time at Pla d’Adet
When turning onto Pla d’Adet, the final climb, the lead had increased a bit. That seemed far from enough to fight for the day’s victory, but Gaudu and Healy immediately flew into it. It was the Irishman who appeared to have the best legs. He quickly went solo and kept the gap to the favourites group stable for a long time. However, the pace was also very high there due to the troops of UAE Emirates. First Soler rode in front, then Sivakov and then Almeida, number four in the classification. For Wilco Kelderman it was already going too fast at this point.
At 7.5 kilometres from the top, an attack came from the favourites group. It was Adam Yates, number seven on the classification and teammate of yellow jersey wearer Tadej Pogacar, who jumped away. Matteo Jorgenson of Visma | Lease a Bike then started to control. Still, Yates was able to ride half a minute away from the Pogacar-Vingegaard-Evenepoel group. He was almost at Healy, when Pogacar attacked at five kilometres from the top. The yellow jersey wearer immediately created a gap with Vingegaard and Pogacar, following which Yates waited for him.
Pogacar goes alone
Yates took the lead ahead of Pogacar. The UAE Emirates duo went up and over Healy, as did Vingegaard and Evenepoel a little later. The difference between the two pairs remained limited, but with four kilometres to go Pogacar went himself. Now the Slovenian cautiously started to increase his lead over Vingegaard. With three kilometres to go he had ten seconds on the Dane, towards the final kilometre the difference increased to more than twenty seconds.
In the final kilometre Pogacar did not stop. In fact, he even extended his lead. In the end Vingegaard had to give 39 seconds. Remco Evenepoel, the number three of the stage result, came in at one minute and ten seconds.
RIT AK PNT MOUNTAIN YOUTH
