Latest news with #Hautacam
Times
5 days ago
- Sport
- Times
Jonas Vingegaard has lost belief he can beat Tadej Pogacar
Hindsight allows us to see with greater clarity. As a contest, the Tour de France ended on the day it was meant to begin. That was the first truly mountainous race to Hautacam, the 12th of 21 stages. It was the moment Tadej Pogacar chose to remind his adversaries they were wasting their time. He will clinch his fourth Tour de France on the Champs-Élysées at tea-time on Sunday but the outcome was known for ten days. Pogacar is the greatest rider of this generation and there are good reasons for considering him the best of all time. When he races, things happen. He has, after all, won 21 stages of the Tour de France and yet the victory at Hautacam ten days ago was still exceptional. For months this was the stage he had targeted, believing it would give him the Yellow Jersey and with the help of his team, they would keep it. Unexpected things happen in the Tour and the day before Hautacam Pogacar crashed close to the finish in Toulouse. It was a high-speed fall where for a frightening second, it seemed his head was about to collide with a 9in roadside kerb. Luckily he instinctively got his head up and just missed the kerb. Still it was a heavy fall and he felt beaten up. Please enable cookies and other technologies to view this content. You can update your cookies preferences any time using privacy manager. That was purely physical. 'Tadej is mentally very strong,' UAE doctor Adrian Rotunno said at the Base Camp Lodge Hotel in Albertville on Friday night. 'We were worried about the impact of that fall. He wasn't.' Hautacam is a 13.5-kilometre climb at an average gradient of 7.8 per cent. This puts it up there with the toughest ascents. They had barely hit Hautacam when Pogacar got team-mates Tim Wellens and Jhonatan Narváez to increase the tempo. They knew the plan because both — Narváez especially — went so fast it seemed they had lost their minds. Only Pogacar and his forever rival, Jonas Vingegaard, could follow Narváez's infernal pace. Of course he could not keep it up for long and when he pulled to one side, Pogacar went even faster. Vingegaard tried to stay with him and for a kilometre or so, he stayed at ten and 12 seconds back. Please enable cookies and other technologies to view this content. You can update your cookies preferences any time using privacy manager. The problem for any rider chasing Pogacar is that if the Slovenian wants to gain time, he does not let up. Takes a short breather and he goes again. He extends his lead, another breather and goes again. No relenting until he has crossed the line and there is no more time to be taken. At Hautacam he arrived 2min 10sec before Vingegaard, the first time in their five-year rivalry that he had taken more than two minutes on the Dane in a stage of the Tour. That gave him an overall lead of 3:31. He tagged on another 36 seconds in the next day's mountain time trial and then, truly, the race was over. This is not a bike rider who loses a lead of four minutes in the Tour. Something else died on Hautacam; namely, the intense rivalry between Pogacar and Vingegaard. Again with the benefit of hindsight we could argue this had happened at the previous month's Critérium du Dauphiné. On three mountain stages Pogacar toyed with his rival. And if there were any doubts about his superiority after the Critérium, they were banished on Hautacam. This led to a certain desperation about Visma-Lease a Bike's approach to the Tour. They set out to upset Pogacar, to do whatever they could to get under his skin. Their difficulty was finding a way. Their leader Vingegaard rode aggressively from the start which was unusual because the hilly stages of the first week did not play to his strengths. It was clear though that Vingegaard was riding strongly, perhaps as well as he has ever done. But on the short, sharp hills into Boulogne, Rouen, Vire-Normandie and Mûr-de-Bretagne, he could not hurt Pogacar. On every stage that Vingegaard finished alongside or just behind Pogacar, he was visibly pleased. That suggested he was content to just hang in there. His team sought to play with Pogacar's head. Their riders attacked not to break away but merely to provoke a reaction from him. He did react and when he realised what they were doing, he thought it ridiculous. Matteo Jorgenson got in his way at a feed zone on the seventh stage and that led to a little pushing match. On Friday's stage to La Plagne, Vingegaard refused to work with Pogacar to rein in the breakaway Thymen Arensman and that infuriated Pogacar. He ended up letting Arensman take the stage because he was not going to tow Vingegaard up to the breakaway. He also squandered his own chance of winning that stage. Visma wanted to get inside his head and they succeeded. At what cost to themselves? The operation was a success but the patient died. From this Tour, we learned why Pogacar loves racing against Mathieu van der Poel and why he chooses to ride the one-day Classics: Flanders, Roubaix, Strade Bianche, Flèche Wallonne and Liège–Bastogne–Liège. In these races, there is not the time or indeed the inclination to play what Pogacar sees as silly games. Visma have some soul-searching to do. They started the Tour protesting total allegiance to Vingegaard only to start looking for stage victories as soon as they thought their man was not going to beat Pogacar. What is certain is that Vingegaard no longer believes he can beat his rival. In this year's Tour, he has performed better than when beating Pogacar in 2022 and 2023. Last year was dispiriting for him. This year was worse. There were moments in the race when, sitting right behind Pogacar after he had attacked Vingegaard looked to check on those directly behind him. He is now as concerned by the riders creeping up on him as he is by one riding away from him. He knows that in a year's time, the German Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and the Scot Oscar Onley (Picnic PostNL) will believe they can challenge Pogacar. Lipowitz and Onley battled for the third step on the podium and even though the German got there, Onley will not be discouraged. At 22, he is two years younger than his rival and he showed he belongs at this level. From a promising third place in last month's Tour de Suisse to fourth in the Tour de France with eight top-ten finishes is some leap. The penultimate stage from Nantua to Pontarlier sent the peloton through the Jura, a 184-kilometre route that had four not overly severe climbs but the weather was horrible and the race difficult. An early break got a gap and they had the day to themselves. Jake Stewart, a British rider with Israel Premier Tech, was there and when the French rider Romain Grégoire and the Spaniard Iván Romeo crashed heavily 21 kilometres from the finish, Stewart found himself with just the Australian Kaden Groves and the Dutch rider Frank van den Broek at the front of the race. Hope did not last long as 16 kilometres from Portarlier, Groves attacked out of the group of three and went steadily clear all the way to the finish. It was a fine performance from the Alpecin-Deceuninck rider. Stewart finished sixth on the stage, his best result so far and now he will finish his first Tour de France. On his way to a fourth Tour victory, Pogacar was asked how this one compared to the others: 'Every year we say, 'This is the hardest Tour ever, the hardest I've ever done' but honestly, this year's Tour was something on another level,' he said. 'I think there was one day where we went a bit easier. Even today, we were almost all out from start to finish. Even though it was the hardest Tour, one of the toughest races I've ever done, I enjoyed it because I had good shape and good legs. But I am really looking forward to the last day in Paris.' Pogacar plans to take Monday off but says he will be back on his bike on Tuesday. There was some joy for Visma-Lease a Bike on Saturday as their veteran Dutch rider Marianne Vos won the opening stage of the Tour de France Femmes with a brilliant late attack. The 38-year-old overtook her team-mate Pauline Ferrand-Prévot approaching the line in Plumelec, and then held off Mauritian rider Kim Le Court in the closing metres of a gruelling uphill finish. Ferrand-Prévot looked set to win the 78.8km stage, but the Frenchwoman attacked too early and could not withstand the late surge from Vos.
New York Times
6 days ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Inside Tadej Pogacar's domination of the 2025 Tour de France
When Tadej Pogacar attacked, it appeared laced with the violence of a rider who really meant it. The 2025 Tour de France, as its reigning champion Pogacar has noted on more than one occasion, appeared crafted with one intention in mind — to defeat him. Its final 10 days included the Hautacam, Mont Ventoux and the Col de la Loze, three climbs where he had lost significant time in previous editions to Jonas Vingegaard, his biggest rival. Advertisement As the days rolled by like the French countryside the Slovenian was pedalling through, he could only contain himself so long. Pogacar reached the base of the Hautacam on July 17, the first of his spectres. Then he went. Twenty-four hours earlier, Pogacar had found himself on the tarmac, the skin of his elbow shorn off. He had been drafting behind the other GC favourites, speeding towards a flat finish in Toulouse, saving energy for the Pyrenean climbs of the coming days. Then, suddenly, he was down, hard, bike clipped by another rider's wheel, and sliding towards the barriers. Watching from the team car, Joxean Fernandez Matxin of UAE Team Emirates XRG was panicking. He tried not to show it. When Pogacar entered the team bus after the stage, and was checked over by the doctor, there was initial relief. The damage looked superficial, while the rider himself was laid-back. 💥 @TamauPogi has crashed but the group of other favorites is waiting for him. 💥 @TamauPogi a chuté mais le groupe des autres favoris l'attend.#TDF2025 — Tour de France™ (@LeTour) July 16, 2025 'It could have been worse,' he told his colleagues. 'I've gone through worse before.' His knees and hips were unaffected. Team director Matxin, however, was still concerned. 'Obviously, we were really worried,' he says. 'We saw the direct consequence of the crash, but that wasn't the main concern. 'Normally, the body retains liquid after a crash. This happened to Joao Almeida (another rider for the team, who had crashed earlier in the Tour) — it takes on one kilo, possibly two. In that moment, before the Hautacam, we needed perfect nutrition. And that weight is a lot, it changes a lot. It could have been really bad.' But by the end of the next day, Matxin realised his anxieties had been misplaced. At the summit of the Hautacam, Pogacar's lead over Vingegaard was over two minutes. The Dane hauled his way up the mountain, mouth contorted, back and elbows askew, willing his bike to chase. This year's Tour was meant to be a battle royale, a generational struggle between two warriors, inevitably to be settled on the final climb. Instead, Pogacar has dominated. His margin of victory, with the race one stage away from Sunday's finale in Paris, appears set to be almost four-and-a-half minutes. At just 26 years old, this will be his fourth yellow jersey. Two years on from losing successive Tours, this is how Pogacar cemented himself as the best rider of his generation. In December 2023, Pogacar and the UAE team's top brass sat down together. These were not crisis talks — he was still the top-ranked rider in the world, and had finished second in both the 2022 and 2023 editions of the Tour de France — but there was a recognition that recalibration was needed. According to one team source: 'Jonas (Vingegaard) had given us a kick up the a**e'. Advertisement Pogacar may previously have been able to win on talent alone, but against Vingegaard and Visma Lease-a-Bike's elite research, development and training programmes, evolution was needed if their star rider was to regain his Tour crown. 'His rivals had gone one step further,' says Matxin. 'So we needed to consider everything. Perfection in nutrition. Perfection in training. Perfection in planning. We couldn't ignore anything. Perfection in the time trial, perfection in the wind tunnel. That was the goal.' UAE would look after several elements themselves, but Pogacar was told to prioritise four — off-bike strength and stability, sprint training at high altitude, heat training, and nutrition. Each was an area where they felt Visma had exploited them before — attacking Pogacar when he was under-fuelled in 2022, cracking him in the heat of the Col de la Loze one year later. At this Tour, there has been evidence of each improvement in action. That winter, Pogacar also changed coaches, from Inigo San Millan to Javier Sola, who was brought in by Jeroen Swart — the team's new head of performance. Pogacar won the Tour last summer, comfortably defeating Vingegaard — but he was a subdued opponent, only recently back on his bike after a terrifying crash at Itzulia Basque Country in the April. Ahead of the 2025 edition, however, both contenders were at full strength. But a surprise revealed itself early in the season, when Pogacar made his desire to ride the Monuments apparent. His team were initially reluctant, remembering the broken wrist he suffered in the Liege-Bastogne-Liege in April 2023, hindering his Tour that summer. Pogacar was resolute. A cycling romantic, he wanted a fresh challenge. 'Obviously, changing to focus on the Monuments was a big risk,' Swart tells The Athletic. 'With Paris-Roubaix being in the schedule, we had to allow Tadej to carry a little extra muscle mass, which you need for the cobbles, and for explosiveness in flat races. 'But then changing back to a Grand Tour-winning physiology is difficult — you can't predict how long it will take to achieve that. We obviously planned it carefully, and in the end, it did work, but it was complex. It was definitely riskier.' But they did have an engaged athlete. UAE have had to ask Pogacar to stop over-training before — here the goals were simple, and the plan was tight. 'He does like to push, and sometimes he can push a little too hard,' Swart describes. 'We've had to say before that he needs to take a break.' This uncertainty meant the traditional pre-Tour warm-up race, the Criterium du Dauphine in June, would be an especially important performance benchmark. Pogacar won handily, beating a stacked field including Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel and Matteo Jorgenson, but a time-trial in which he lost seconds to all three of them sparked wider speculation about his condition. Advertisement UAE did not panic internally at this performance — there was a quick realisation that his pacing strategy had gone wrong — but it still stung Pogacar to hear Visma celebrating. Hearing one interview taking place outside the UAE van, where he was changing alone, he slammed the window shut. Entering the Tour one month later, Vingegaard's talk was focused on his acceleration — a bulking-up programme which he hoped would allow him to match Pogacar on the steeper climbs. 'This is an innate strength of Tadej,' says Swart. 'We did more high-intensity work leading into the Classics, because we know it augments adaptations which have taken place in response to high-volume, low-intensity work, and that was something Tadej hadn't been doing enough of in the past. But in terms of his pure explosiveness? It's not something he needs to work on particularly.' He demonstrated that by winning stage four, up numerous sharp slopes into Rouen, and stage seven, at Mur-de-Bretagne. These, plus taking just over a minute on Vingegaard during the stage five time-trial in Caen, allowed him to build a small but significant lead over his rival entering the mountains. 'He might not have been perfect at the Dauphine,' said Matzin, 'but we understood what to change for the Tour de France. Here, it was almost the perfect time-trial.' But Pogacar also avoided losing time through positioning errors. UAE got comfortably outperformed by Visma during his Tour defeats to Vingegaard — but here, Pogacar could call upon a number of rouleurs who ensured he was almost always looked after. Tim Wellens had arguably been the key domestique of the race, and was rewarded in winning stage 15. Yet entering the mountains, Pogacar still appeared to have challenges ahead despite his advantage. His team looked strong on the flat, but Joao Almeida, his key mountain lieutenant, had been forced to withdraw with a broken rib. He had crashed himself on stage 11 in Toulouse, and the weather forecast for the Pyrenees was for dry heat — conditions in which Pogacar had historically struggled. Advertisement 'We started implementing heat training across the team at the end of 2023,' explains Swart. 'And it's something we'll do in the lead-up to particularly important competitions, or if there are especially hot conditions. We don't want to give too much away, but it's a session that they do. And it's clearly added to Tadej's performance. He's improved progressively each year.' The Hautacam was proof of that. In conditions of over 30C (86F), there were still 12km left of the climb when Pogacar's Ecuadorian teammate Jhonatan Narvaez came to the front. He rapidly accelerated, almost sprinting up the peak's lower slopes. Pogacar followed, and then overtook. Vingegaard was straining to keep his wheel — and then the elastic snapped. 💥 Here we go! After some great work by Jhonatan Narvaez, @TamauPogi is the first to attack! 💥 C'est parti ! Après un très gros travail de Jhonatan Narvaez, @TamauPogi déclenche les hostilités ! #TDF2025 — Tour de France™ (@LeTour) July 17, 2025 The decisive move may have appeared laden with intent — but it came about somewhat by accident. 'The plan was a hard pace,' laughs Matxin. 'But not a super-hard pace. This was more like full, full, full gas. He is usually one of the best for a five-minute effort, this was basically one minute. But on this day, it was perfect for us.' 'I don't know if Jhonny really understood this, but we were joking,' Pogacar said after the stage. 'I guess he doesn't take jokes, because he launched it super-hard. I was not expecting that we would really do this. My microphone was not working, so I couldn't say anything. I was just like: 'OK, l'll follow Jhonny.' 'It was similar to three years ago. I was alone and suffering for the final 10 kilometres, so it was better to be up at the front and in the lead — rather than suffering and on the back foot.' Advertisement The Hautacam was the first proof of a pattern that has emerged from this Tour. Pogacar has improved, beating his best times up the Hautacam and Mont Ventoux. Vingegaard, meanwhile, has stayed at his level of two years ago. Part of this is still likely influenced by Vingegaard's crashes. The Itzulia incident affected some of the Dane's offseason strengthening work and a fall in Paris-Nice in March this year saw him suffer a concussion. But that is not to negate Pogacar's development. 'Our nutrition strategy has evolved,' says Swart. 'Riders are now regularly consuming 110 to 120 grams per hour of carbohydrate. Then there's the equipment side, where we've improved aerodynamics and biomechanics. Across the performance spectrum, we've been making changes.' Another major change, pointed to by both Pogacar and the team, has been the impact of new coach Sola. The pair have worked extensively on his VO2 max, as well as zone two work, to develop his fatigue resistance. Sola is also based in Europe whereas Pogacar's previous coach San Millan was in the United States, which the UAE team feel has helped the implementation of their performance plans. 'This is where I think I've improved the most,' Pogacar told Cycling Weekly over the winter. 'When I'm fatigued, I don't lose much explosiveness, so it's really an upgrade for me.' The day after the Hautacam, on a short uphill time-trial to Peyragudes, Pogacar demonstrated that explosiveness. He won the stage over an improved Vingegaard by 36 seconds, pushing his GC lead to over four minutes. It demonstrated his natural powers of recovery — arguably the key physical characteristic behind his performance. 'There are a huge number of metabolic markers that are associated with fatigue,' Swart explains. 'Early in 2019, we discovered that Tadej was unique compared to his teammates — they were far better compared to the same training load. 'He has a unique ability to recover, to assimilate the training and move on. He needs less rest, and what we've actually seen in the Tour over recent years is that he posts his career or season-best performances in the final week of the Tour. That's very different to most riders. It's remarkable.' With his legs feeling good, the key was staying out of trouble. One member of the UAE staff describes needing to persuade Pogacar to travel back down from summit finishes in the team's van, rather than cycle it himself, like the majority of other riders. 'It's much quicker on my bike,' the yellow jersey would protest. Advertisement But by the 2025 Tour's third week, it was clear that Pogacar was in the position to ride a defensive race the rest of the way. Where he has previously been over-aggressive — notably charging down attacks from Visma in the 2022 Tour — here he was content to stay with Vingegaard on the climbs to Superbagneres and Mont Ventoux, before rounding him in each stage's final metres. The Tour's Queen stage up the Col de la Loze showed his tactical development. In a complicated race, where Visma had multiple satellite riders up the road, Pogacar recognised on the descent of the Col de la Madeleine that it would be to his advantage if the race came back together. Once again, he tracked Vingegaard as the Visma leader burned through teammates, before attacking in the last kilometre. His team see this as a 'maturation effect' — he was just 21 years old when he won his first Tour in 2020. 'He is a super-intelligent guy,' argues Matxin. 'Obviously, he knows what to do when the lead is four minutes, but when he needs to attack, he attacks. Of course, he still has preferences. He likes to attack — he'll always prefer that to being conservative.' It appeared that Visma had attempted to zero in on this earlier in the Tour. Pogacar and Jorgenson quarrelled at feed zones, while the Slovenian was visibly exasperated at the Dutch squad's repeated attacks during stage six, stating he did not understand their tactics. Internally at UAE, the sense was that even if Pogacar was frustrated after the stage, he was still making the right decisions in the moment. Ultimately, it is difficult to irk somebody's legs. As INEOS Grenadiers rider Geraint Thomas observed in the Tour's final days: 'You can isolate a Ferrari, but it still goes fast.' When Pogacar crosses the line in Paris tomorrow, it will be his fourth Tour title in six years. If fit, he will be the favorite in 2026 as he bids to join Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain as the only five-time winners of the race. He is now odds-on to win more yellow jerseys than any other rider in history. Advertisement Cycling is a sport where suspicion is natural, because those at its heart have been burned before. For now, Pogacar's dominance appears legitimate, his fourth Tour victory likely to be remembered as one of the high points of a period of boundary-pushing dominance. 'He's been incredibly strong and he deserves to win,' Vingegaard said at the summit of La Planche on Friday. 'Sometimes you just have to accept that, and I do now.' For more cycling, follow Global Sports on The Athletic app via the Discover tab
Wall Street Journal
18-07-2025
- Sport
- Wall Street Journal
‘We Flipped the Tables.' Tadej Pogacar Gets Sweet Tour de France Revenge
Hautacam, France The careful thing to do is remind you that the 2025 Tour de France isn't over—that there's more than a week and several very difficult stages left before the finish in Paris, and any declarations about the winner of this bike race are premature and probably irresponsible.
Japan Times
18-07-2025
- Sport
- Japan Times
Vingegaard and team get a taste of their own medicine on the Tour
While Tadej Pogacar has been enjoying a dream Tour de France run this year, his main rival Jonas Vingegaard and his once almighty team are now closer to third than first place after just one high mountain stage on Thursday. Vingegaard was left shattered by Pogacar's brutal attack in the climb up to Hautacam in the 12th stage, leaving the two-time champion 3:31 behind his rival in the overall standings. "On the last climb Tadej was clearly the best and in the end Jonas also suffered a lot. Tomorrow is a new day, we will keep fighting," Vingegaard's Visma-Lease a Bike sports director Grischa Niermann told reporters. "He is the best of the rest." In 2022, Visma-Lease a Bike riders pulled off a tactical coup in the Alps by trapping Pogacar, before Vingegaard effectively sealed his maiden Tour title in Hautacam by humiliating the Slovenian. He added another title in 2023 by beating Pogacar by more than seven minutes, with the Slovenian having broken his wrist two and a half months before the Tour. Pogacar emerged triumphant at last year's edition, when Vingegaard's preparation was hampered by a freak crash a few months before the Tour. This year, however, the rivalry could reach new heights as both riders announced they were at their peak. Suffer fest Pogacar hammered Vingegaard in the first individual time trial and was merciless on Thursday as the Dane's teammates were a shadow of their dominant selves. Key mountain lieutenants Matteo Jorgenson and Simon Yates were of no help as they struggled as early as the Col du Soulor and left Vingegaard fighting on his own at the bottom of Hautacam. Memories of the humiliation three years ago must have been at the forefront of Pogacar's mind and everything clicked when he realised Visma-Lease a Bike was not as strong as he had expected. The team's attempts at upping the pace failed and the world champion smelled blood. "The biggest switch in my head happened when I saw what Visma tried. They followed their plan, but I noticed not everyone (in their team) was feeling great," he said. "That was the moment I mentally switched — I thought, OK, today can actually be a really, really good day. Johnny (Jhonatan Narvaez) was still there, Marc Soler wasn't far behind — we even thought he might come back. Adam (Yates) was there, Tim (Wellens) was up front. All of that gave us the belief, the mental boost, that today could really go our way." At the end of the day, Pogacar won a Tour stage by 2:10 — his biggest margin on a Tour win. "Based on my feelings, I feel like it is the best moment of my career. I'm riding in a rainbow (world champion) jersey. I ride with an amazing team. Amazing teammates, so it's like a fairytale for me riding on the bike these couple of years now," he said. "I just feel like until I enjoy this bike riding stuff and enjoy this suffer fest but with the fans on the side of the road, then I think I can still go on."
France 24
18-07-2025
- Sport
- France 24
Tour de France: Pogacar's Solo Masterclass Seals Stage 12 Victory
05:04 05:04 min From the show Tadej Pogacar delivered a stunning solo performance on Thursday to win Stage 12 of the Tour de France at Hautacam. The Slovenian rider, racing for UAE Team Emirates - XRG, claimed a prestigious mountain victory and struck a decisive blow in the general classification. He reclaimed the yellow jersey and now holds a lead of over two minutes on rival Jonas Vingegaard. Elswhere in Sports News: In football, the summer transfer market is heating up: Liverpool have reached an agreement with Hugo Ekitike, Thiago Almada is set to join Atlético Madrid, Noa Lang is heading to Napoli, and promising Norwegian talent Sverre Nypan has signed with Manchester City. In the Women's Euro, England booked their spot in the semi-finals after a dramatic win over Sweden on Thursday. Other headlines include a record-breaking transfer in women's football, the suspension of the women's marathon world record holder for doping, and a major comeback story in the NBA.
