The UAE team had come up with something new for these last hairpin bends of the climb to Saint-Gervais Mont-Blanc. With a kilometer to go, Tadej Pogacar stepped up to take a few seconds off his rival Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo), but unlike recent mountain stages, the yellow jersey’s Dane stayed close this time without difficulty. So Pogacar slowed down again – and about 500 meters from the finish two teammates were waiting for him to put the sprint on him as if Pogacar were the new Jasper Philipsen. But that too was a wasted effort.
At the end of this 179km mountain stage, Pogacar and Vingegaard crossed the finish line side by side, just like the day before in Morzine. And this time they didn’t have to fight for bonus seconds either, because they were taken long ago – first and foremost to Wout Poels, the winner of the day, who already clinched the second day’s win of this tour for the controversial Bahrain team.
This means that Vingegaard’s lead over Pogacar is ten seconds after the first difficult stages in the Alps. After the rest day on Monday, the Slovenian has two more good opportunities to attack the yellow jersey: first in the time trial on Tuesday, then in the difficult stage from Saint-Gervais to Courchevel on Wednesday; It then goes, among other things, over the Col de la Loze, at 2303 meters the highest point of this tour. It should be as tight there as in the past few days, because not only do the two captains appear about the same, but also their most important helpers.
The big loser of this weekend’s Alpine stages was Australia’s Jai Hindley, captain of the German Bora team. He dropped from third to fifth overall and is now 67 seconds off the podium; Third place is now the Spaniard Carlos Rodriguez (Ineos). Hindley was involved in a mass crash early in the stage on Saturday, which apparently had an impact at the end as he fell unusually early out of the group of favorites on the final tough climb. And the after-effects of the fall could also be felt on Sunday – Hindley again lost time to his competitors. In addition, his most important helper, Emanuel Buchmann, fell on the last descent of the day, but he was able to complete the stage.