Tadej Pogačar attacked on the final climb of stage 19 and swallowed up breakaway riders Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Simon Yates (Jayco-AIUla) to take the stage win and gain 1:42″ on GC rivals Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step).
Pogačar explained afterwards that everything went according to plan. “This was the queen stage of this Tour de France. I can confirm now that the Bonette is a very scary climb. In training it’s cool because you can skip the last kilometer, but in a race… But I’m super happy that I had good legs. During the Giro and Tour I trained here for a month. It was a tough period. There were no easy days, because you had to keep going up here. So I knew the climb very well. During the training camp I had already discussed with my teammates how we wanted to race that day, and we did it exactly as we said. It went perfectly. I’m super happy with my margin. Tomorrow I can just enjoy the stage. We’ll let a leading group go. We’ll enjoy the roads where I trained for the Tour and where I’ve trained for almost my entire career. Hopefully nothing serious will happen tomorrow.”
Vingegaard admitted he was not at his best and was happy not to lose time to Evenepoel. “I didn’t have the best legs today. As a team, we immediately made the decision to go for a stage win. I’m glad I didn’t lose any time to Remco Evenepoel. Today it was important to follow him, but tomorrow it could be different again. I travelled to this Tour with the idea of going for the final victory. But I also knew it would be difficult, after that heavy crash (Tour of the Basque Country) and few racing days. So I took this scenario into account. Mentally, this is certainly not a blow.”
Matteo Jorgenson was resigned to his 2nd place performance. “I did my best, but it wasn’t meant to be. In the final, I only thought about my legs. I rode as hard as I could and didn’t think about anything else. When I heard that he (meaning Pogacar) was getting closer, I already had a bad feeling. When he passed me, I knew it was over. In a sprint, I wouldn’t have had a chance either.”
“I felt good, especially at altitude,” continues the number three in the standings. “I wasn’t weakening. Okay, at the end the best was gone, but that was also because Jonas was on my wheel. I decided not to continue riding 100%, since Jonas is of course also someone who has experience riding uphill on my wheel.”
Evenepoel reminded everyone that the Tour is not over yet. “Whether we lose one and a half minutes or six minutes to Pogacar, that remains the same. I gave until the finish. It looks good for the podium at the moment, but it’s not over yet.”
RESULTS
Stage 19: Embrun > Isola 2000 (144.6km)
Results powered by FirstCycling.com
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