Tadej Pogacar sprints are ‘show of defiance’ – Robbie McEwen on Tour de France champion’s mind games

Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) is making a statement to his GC rivals with his succession of end-of-stage sprints at the Tour de France, according to Robbie McEwen.

The Slovenian again turned on the afterburners at the Stage 10 summit finish as he forced Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) to close the gap, with the 23-year-old failing to put any more time into his yellow jersey rivals.

With two brutal days to follow, including Wednesday’s dual hors categorie ascents of the Col du Galibier and the Col du Granon, McEwen believes Pogacar’s fast finishes are a “show of defiance” to his closest challenger Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma).

“It’s a 39-second gap between him and Vingegaard,” said 12-time Tour stage winner McEwen on The Breakaway.

“Take off the 13 seconds on the cobbles [Stage 5], eight seconds was between them in the initial time trial [Stage 1], so 18 seconds of his lead has been built up by time bonuses or those little sprints to the finish. That’s a lot of the buffer he has built up.

“But I think the sprinting at the finish is a show of defiance. He’s saying ‘listen, I’ve still got this left – what have you got left? And when it gets to the big stuff I’m going to do it again.’

“I expect him tomorrow, on the first real proper mountain-top finish, to really show what he’s got and try to build up a proper buffer.”

Kamna briefly moved into the virtual lead after the gap back to the peloton increased above the 8’43” he trailed Pogacar coming out of the second rest day, but the pace increased in the bunch to ensure the Slovenian kept yellow heading into the Stage 11 altitude-fest.

Adam Blythe claims UAE were ready to relinquish control of the yellow jersey on Tuesday but suggested some sneaky tactics from Jumbo-Visma blocked them from doing so.

Jumbo-Visma drove the pace for the GC big-hitters on the final Cat. 2 climb, with Blythe saying their efforts dragged Pogacar and UAE back past Kamna into the overall lead.

“I think they might have wanted to [give away yellow] today,” said Blythe.

“I think Jumbo-Visma are very clever and we saw Wout van Aert leading up that final climb. They’ll be thinking of the next two days: ‘there’s no way he [Pogacar] is getting out of yellow now. We want them [UAE] riding on the front tomorrow and tiring his team out’.

He added: “Pogacar has lost two team-mates and was just maybe wanting to slow things down. Jumbo-Visma being wise, went ‘not today, son, you are going to ride in yellow tomorrow’.

“The next two stages are brutal so why wouldn’t they [Jumbo-Visma] want to try and tire the team out by setting them off on the front tomorrow?” continued Blythe.

“This is the perfect chance for Roglic to try and put them [UAE] under pressure and get himself back into GC.”

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