Forget Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard’s biggest rival at Tour de France is Jai Hindley – Jonathan Vaughters

Jonas Vingegaard’s biggest rival for the yellow jersey at the 2023 Tour de France is Jai Hindley (Bora-hansgrohe), not Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates), EF Education–EasyPost boss Jonathan Vaughters claimed on The Breakaway after a Stage 5 thriller.

Pogacar arrived with a huge question mark over his form and fitness after fracturing his wrist at Liege-Bastogne-Liege in April, with the two-time champion only given the green light to train again on the road in June.

And Vaughters, a special guest on Eurosport’s coverage in the Pyrenees, said Jumbo-Visma would now turn their attention to delivering the “last nail in the coffin” on Thursday’s summit finish.

“They’ll definitely take time on Pogacar if they can,” said Vaughters ahead of Stage 6 to Cauterets, which also goes over the mythical Col du Tourmalet.

“They’ll want to put that to bed and put the last nail in the coffin as soon as they can. But I don’t think Pogacar is Vingegaard’s biggest rival. I think it’s Jai.”

Meanwhile, Eurosport’s motorbike extraordinaire Philippe Gilbert said Pogacar’s wrist injury may have ruined his bid for a third Tour crown already.

“I think we all forgot Pogacar broke his wrist at Liege, he had a lot of disruption in his preparation of the Tour and there was still a question mark around his form,” Gilbert said at the finish.

“He responded quite well with the first stages – perfect for him with let’s say Classic-like first two stages. But today, the first mountain type stage, we can see the lack of training during these long weeks and maybe we are not going to see Tadej at his best during this Tour.”

Given Pogacar’s interrupted build-up, it has been rather surprising to see UAE Team Emirates pursue – and then defend – the yellow jersey with such gusto.

After taking it on the opening stage with Adam Yates in Bilbao, they then launched Pogacar to bonus seconds a day later and rode on the front for the majority of Wednesday’s stage to Laruns.

“If we look back on what UAE have done throughout this Tour so far, they’ve come in red hot, they want the yellow jersey, they’ve got the yellow jersey,” said Adam Blythe.

“Day 2, they rode like lunatics, Tadej got the bonus seconds on the climb. The day after they took control, although very gently. For me, they’ve just been riding too hard.”

Vaughters added: “Pogacar was sitting fourth wheel for 100km today. Think of the amount of wind he was taking just sitting up there. It’s a lot.”

Hindley ‘hard to unseat’ but Vingegaard ‘is strongest by a mile’

After Hindley was surprisingly allowed in the day’s 36-man breakaway, he blew away the remaining escapees on the Cat. 1 Marie Blanque to go clear – belatedly sparking alarm bells behind.

Vingegaard responded by putting the hammer down and immediately distanced two-time champion Pogacar, forming a four-strong chase group after the summit as they set their sights on the Australian out front.

But there was to be no stopping the 2022 Giro d’Italia champion as Hindley time trialled to the finish to take a famous win and rip up the script in the general classification. Vingegaard ultimately had to settle for fifth place, 34 seconds down on Hindley, after fellow chasers Felix Gall (AG2R-Citroen), Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) and Emanuel Buchmann (Bora-hansgrohe) hopped past him in the finish straight.

Hindley now leads Vingegaard by 47 seconds in the general classification. Previous leader Yates is fifth at 1’34”, with Pogacar sixth at 1’40”.

“I think he [Hindley] is going to be harder to unseat from that yellow jersey than everyone thinks,” said Vaughters.

“Tomorrow is going to be incredibly difficult and of course Vingegaard is clearly the strongest rider in the race by a mile – he put a minute into Pogacar in 1km and brought Hindley back by over a minute in 1km on that climb.”

He added: “What we saw today was the only chance that the race was going to be a little bit more exciting than just the dynamic duo [Pogacar and Vingegaard] punching each other. So now we’ve got that.

“To me, Jai Hindley recovers very well in the third week of a Grand Tour and he’s already got a little bit of free time, the ‘magical power of the yellow jersey’, which does give riders a boost. I think it turns the race into something a bit more interesting than it was going to be before.”

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