Opinion: Jonas Vingegaard wins best Tour de France stage in years to set up Alpe d’Huez thriller

For the first time in his short but illustrious Tour career, Tadej Pogacar now knows what it’s like to have the yellow jersey torn emphatically from his shoulders with the world watching.

Jumbo-Visma were – to a man – nothing short of flawless on the 148km Stage 11 from Albertville to the Col du Granon.

Wout van Aert jumped from the gun to add yet more green jersey points to his haul in an unexpected cameo off the front with the soon-to-be-departing Mathieu van der Poel; Christophe Laporte managed to infiltrate the day’s break alongside Van Aert, the two later providing relays on the descent of the Galibier and decisive firepower for their leaders ahead of the final climb.

Tiesj Benoot paved the way with a number of digs on both the Col du Telegraph and the Col du Galibier, softening things up ahead of the scattergun attacks from both Roglic and Vingegaard; Sepp Kuss and Steven Kruijswijk stuck with the chasers and ensured Jumbo-Visma carried a 5-to-2 advantage going onto the Col du Granon over Pogacar, who rode most of the stage in deep isolation until Rafal Majka gamely fought back on the descent of the Galibier.

The only rider whose name didn’t seem to crop up was Nathan van Hooydonck – and although the Dutchman was the first domestique to be distanced, he no doubt played a key role at the beginning of the stage in support of his leaders while the day’s break and road hierarchy took shape.

It was a hierarchy where Jumbo-Visma ruled with an iron grip, subjugating the citizens of the Tour to a barrage of attacks and, ultimately, a coup d’etat that would topple a kingdom and possibly end a reign many of us thought would last for years.

So often we have watched stages of Grand Tours and lamented teams or riders leaving it too late. Indeed, in the case of the Giro this May, the decisive GC battle – as exciting as it was from Jai Hindley and Bora-Hansgrohe – didn’t come until the last climb on the penultimate day of the race.

But on Wednesday Jumbo-Visma rained down attacks on the third-to-last climb with almost 70km remaining of a stage that essentially marked only the halfway point of the Tour. It was both the craziest and slickest tactical display we have seen in recent years to set up perhaps the most satisfying GC tussle many of us have ever witnessed in our lifetimes.

Of course, many of us saw it coming – or at least held high hopes that such a thing may materialise.

Jumbo-Visma were bound to go for the jugular when their rivals at UAE Team Emirates were on the ropes: down two men because of Covid and with another pedalling on in spite of infection, they simply didn’t have the numbers or the ability to deal with the onslaught laid at their door.

Pogacar’s two wins in week one, his constant pushing for bonus seconds and early control of the race led to what French newspaper L’Equipe described as an “insolent smile” etched across his face. But he would surely struggle in the heat and fail to replicate his short uphill sprints at high altitude?

At least, those were the theories. As was the notion that the longer, tougher, higher Alpine climbs such as the Galibier and Granon would suit Vingegaard far more than a fancy-dan like Pogacar.

Be that as it may, Vingegaard and Jumbo-Visma still had to carry out their masterplan and deliver on their promise. Can we not count the number of times Bahrain Victorious have set things up for Mikel Landa, only for everything to come crashing down? And don’t so many of us, phones in hand in the comfort of our armchairs, imagine sometimes that we know better than the professional sporting directors out there who miss a trick and fail to employ their firepower in a way we would, if only we had the chance…

“On the Galibier I still felt good, really good. I’m getting a lot of attacking from Jumbo-Visma today, they were really good. Then on the last climb, I don’t know, I just didn’t have a good final day. I was suffering until the end,” Pogacar said at the end of his jour sans, his once impregnable yellow aura replaced by an almost emasculating white.

Like we saw when he came fourth in a two-horse race at Flanders, the two-time winner became an altogether different preposition when in the white jersey reserved not for the best rider, but merely the best young one.

Gracious in defeat, Pogacar, who could yet top both categories this year and next, was full of praise for the architects of his demise, having congratulated Vingegaard with a handshake at the finish.

“They played it really smart and for us it was really hard to control at the start – who goes in the breakaway – because we are not many guys anymore. We tried but, in the end, they had Van Aert and Laporte up front and tactically they did a really good job.”

Really good is an understatement. It may be another 36 years – the time it took for the Tour to return to the Col du Granon – for us to witness a similar all-round display of such domination in a Grand Tour. The team is now running away in the two most important classifications, with Van Aert now 149 points clear of Fabio Jakobsen in the battle for green, and Vingegaard 2’16” clear of his nearest challenger.

That said nearest challenger is not Pogacar but Romain Bardet – albeit by a matter of seconds – underlines just how far the two-time champion fell. The Granon, in only its second outing in the Tour, proved again to be the graveyard of yellow jersey hopes – just as it had in 1986 when Bernard Hinault crumbled, never to return again to the summit of a race he’d won a record five times.

His yellow jersey unzipped and flapping in the wind during a tortuous final 4km slog to the summit, Pogacar couldn’t get the burdensome garment off his shoulders quick enough. And to think that, 24 hours earlier, he had sprinted to protect this same maillot jaune from Lennard Kamna – saving it by a mere 11 seconds from a German who would come home almost half-an-hour down on the Granon.

But the very best thing about Wednesday’s stage was precisely the fact that, unlike Pogacar’s coup in 2020 or Bora-Hansgrohe’s Hindley masterclass in the Giro, it did not come on the eve of the processional final stage, but with nine more days and three more summit finishes.

And on Thursday, Pogacar, in white and with his depleted UAE squad putting on a brave face, will have the chance at instant revenge.

“I want to race until the end. I want to give it everything and have no regrets. It’s not over yet,” Pogacar said, before adding ominously: “Today I lose three minutes. Maybe tomorrow I gain three minutes. We’ll see. I’ll keep fighting to the end.”

It’s a piece of delicious symmetry, then, that immediately after the 18 hairpin bends of the Lacets of Montvernier and the Col de Galibier, Stage 12 will employ the other side of the same Galibier climb where Jumbo-Visma attacked like their was no tomorrow – ahead of a showdown on the 21 hairpin bends of Alpe d’Huez.

This race no doubt has just as many twists and turns to run – and it would take a brave man to bet against Pogacar getting turning the tables at the first time of asking, even if the Slovenian tyro, for the first time in his career, cracked on the Tour after Jumbo-Visma’s flawless team performance was capped by the man Pogacar recently described as “the best climber in the world”. Veni, vidi, Vingegaard…

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