Tadej Pogacar tightens grip on yellow jersey in Critérium du Dauphiné
For the second straight day, Tadej Pogacar rode away from his main rivals on the final ascent as he cemented his grip on the Critérium de Dauphiné yellow jersey in Saturday's mountainous Queen Stage. 'I launched it and maintained a good pace to the top,' he said. The Slovenian had grabbed the overall lead the day before when he shot clear on the short closing climb.
On the penultimate stage, a 131.7km run from Grand-Aigueblanche, Pogacar's UAE Team Emirates teammate Pavel Sivakov reduced the leading pack by setting a ferocious tempo at the front at the start of the 20km final climb to Valmeinier ski resort.
With 12km to go, Pogacar upped the tempo, standing on his pedals and rocketing clear. As on Friday, only Jonas Vingegaard, his main Tour de France rival, and the young German Florian Lipowitz could respond. Vingegaard settled into a dogged pursuit.
Pogacar, without rising out of his saddle again, was able to maintain an uncatchable pace. He increased his lead to as much as 30 seconds before relaxing towards the end. He cruised across the line 14 seconds ahead of Vingegaard, quivering with effort as he came home.
'Jonas was really strong – I did not want to go too deep myself,' said Pogacar. 'It was a super-hot and long climb. Luckily, I had enough time to ease up in the last kilometres and recovered. Happy I could defend the jersey like this.'
Lipowitz was again third at 1min 21sec. The Belgian Remco Evenepoel, who had led the overall classification until Friday, finished fifth, as he had on Friday, losing 2:39. With one stage to go, Pogacar increased his lead to 1:01 over Vingegaard, 2:01 over German Florian Lipowitz and 4:11 to Evenepoel in fourth.
For much of the stage, Vingegaard's lieutenants on the powerful Visma team launched attack after attack, but they could not shake off Pogacar, or Sivakov, either going up or down the day's biggest climb, the Col de la Croix de Fer.
Pogacar said: 'We wanted to take control on all the climbs, but Visma tried with all the attacks. I was pretty happy with how Pavel and the team rode today. It was sort of defence, to not get attacked by everyone from Visma.'
He complained at the way Visma had tried to drop him on the descent of the Col. 'They went a little bit dangerous in the first kilometres of the downhill,' he said. 'I didn't like that, but it's modern cycling.'
As the start of the Tour de France on 5 July approaches, Pogacar beat Vingegaard to take a third stage victory in the race. It was also the 98th stage win of the Slovenian's career, breaking his tie with the French sprinter Arnaud Démare for most by an active rider.
He has a chance for one more on Sunday when the race finishes with another mountainous stage, 133.3km from Val-d'Arc to the Plateau du Mont-Cenis.
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