Tour de France: Vingegaard shows signs of superiority on Marie Blanque

On a chaotic day at the Tour de France, Jumbo-Visma once again seemed to come out on top after the shake-up. Despite Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe) winning the stage and taking the yellow jersey, it was Jonas Vingegaard and his Jumbo-Visma teammates who took time from nearly everyone else of note.

Most of all, in the much-anticipated showdown between Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates), Vingegaard has taken lumps out of his Slovenian counterpart’s campaign to reclaim the Tour de France title. Vingegaard now sits second in the general classification, 47 seconds behind Hindley. Pogačar is now in sixth, 1:40 behind Hindley and 53 seconds behind Vingegaard.

“I’m super happy with having 53 seconds, it’s super nice,” Vingegaard said after the race. "First of all, we wanted to have a guy in the breakaway as a satellite rider. We ended up with three, so that’s even better. The guys did super, super great today. We didn’t have to pull in the bunch, which was good for us.”

The final selection and attack happened in quick succession on the final climb of the Col de Marie Blanque. For most of the climb, the peloton dwindled under the pace of Jumbo-Visma after they had taken a back seat to UAE Team Emirates all stage long, with the aforementioned satellite riders of Tiesj Benoot and Wout van Aert taking the impetus to chase off their shoulders. This was a deliberate and calculating choice to take advantage of Hindley’s presence in the breakaway and put the workload on Pogačar’s team.

“Of course, we have to look at Jai Hindley,” Vingegaard said, explaining his team’s strategy in giving Hindley - last year’s Giro d’Italia champion - a four-minute leash. “During the stage, we were also thinking about whether we should put a guy on the front or not. We decided not to because being in the break takes a lot of energy.”

With only 2km remaining on the climb, Hindley was solo off the front of the race and held an advantage of 2:11 seconds to a peloton that was now just nine riders as Sepp Kuss came to the front to start pulling. Within 500 metres, the group was down to three: Kuss, Vingegaard and Pogačar. By the time Kuss was done with his pull, Pogačar was dropped and Vingegaard was in full flight alone, tracking down Hindley and trying to bury his Slovenian rival.

“On the final climb, I felt good and I said to Sepp that he should go to the front and start pushing and he did, then I attacked,” Vingegaard said. “I just felt good. I just look at myself and if I feel good then I try to attack.”

In the final kilometre of the Marie Blanque, Vingegaard took out over a minute on Pogačar and pulled back over a minute on Hindley. While the time gaps held steady and Hindley ended up taking the lead of the race, those time chunks that Vingegaard took over both of his remaining rivals for the yellow jersey in Paris seemed incredibly telling.

For Hindley, there is the obvious qualification that he had a much more strenuous ride to the base of the final climb, having been in the breakaway all day. For Pogačar, however, there was much less to fall back on to explain his deficit. In short, it seems as if he simply didn’t have the legs.

“I don’t know, I think you have to ask him,” Vingegaard said when asked about why Pogačar faltered after his attack. “I know Tadej, he never gives up, so it will be a fight all the way to Paris.”

With the first stage in the Pyrenees coming so early at this year's Tour, it is impossible to draw hard and fast conclusions from stage 5. Yet what we do know now is what the scorecard is moving forward. Pogačar, after a strong opening, has his stock trending down. Hindley, after a quiet first couple of days, will see his stock rise. Vingegaard, meanwhile, will be seen by most as the undeniable favourite.

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