Jonas Vingegaard was tired but happy after the finish of stage 10 of the Tour de France, high in the Massif Central.
The Dane and his Visma-Lease a Bike team had plenty to celebrate: Simon Yates' stage win, an excellent tactical team performance, and Vingegaard was able to stay with Tadej Pogačar when he made one of his usual accelerations.
"It's an incredible day for us. We won the stage. Also, for me personally, I'm happy with my legs and how I felt today. I think we can say it was a good day," Vingegaard said before descending from the Le-Mont-Dore finish to his team bus for the 340km transfer to Toulouse and the first red day.
"We wanted to have a good man in the break, and we had Simon there, and he's incredible, then he won the stage. I'm extremely happy for him."
The Tour de France riders will enjoy the first rest day after ten days of intense, tactical and aggressive racing.
Pogačar seemed content to let Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost) take the yellow jersey and the responsibilities that go with it.
Healy now leads Pogačar by 29 seconds, with Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) third overall at 1:29. Vingegaard is at 1:49, so still a significant 1:20 on his eternal Tour rival. "I'm still behind and I have to take time at one point," Vingegaard admitted before seeing his glass half full.
"So far in this Tour de France, I've been able to follow all his attacks, which I wasn't able to do in the Dauphine. I think that shows that I have a better level now."
Visma-Lease a Bike are well aware they are more than a minute behind Pogačar.
"Jonas is super strong, the same counts for Tadej, and that was a really big attack again from Tadej, Jonas could counter it, and they could finish together. In the end, a good day, but we of course are lagging behind on GC," directeur sportif Grischa Niermann said.
"Somewhere we have to find the moment to attack him, and that will not be easy because he is just so strong."
Visma-Lease a Bike used Matteo Jorgenson to set the pace on the penultimate climb, then linked up with Victor Campenaerts, who was also in the attack of the day, to help Yates and be there as a so-called 'satellite' rider. They were tactical moves rather than all-out attacks on Pogačar.
The surge and chase reduced the gap to the breakaway after UAE Team Emirates-XRG had controlled the peloton all stage. But then Pogačar and Vingegaard looked at each other after Pogačar's surge on the 3.3km climb to the finish, allowing Healy to become the virtual race leader.
Vingegaard denied that Visma rode to try to keep Pogačar in yellow.
"That's not the reason we were attacking," he said when asked directly.
"We were attacking to try to put some pressure on. If he stayed in yellow, he'd have to do the podium ceremony every day, so that takes some energy, but we don't think about that. We were just sticking to our own plan, and that was to put pressure on UAE.
"UAE have a very strong team, and Pogačar also had to do a bit of work himself, so they were strong and good at defending today. Hats off to them.
"Of course, it was a hard day, it was up and down and super hard. I'm just super happy with how it went, with Simon winning but also my own legs."
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