Tadej Pogacar became the youngest rider to reach 21 Tour de France stage wins as he stretched his advantage in the yellow jersey to more than four minutes in Friday’s mountain time trial to Peyragudes.
Pogacar completed the 10.9km route from Loudenvielle – 8km of which was made up of the first category climb to the mountain top airstrip – in a time of 23 minutes flat, putting another 36 seconds into his closest rival Jonas Vingegaard as others fell even further back.
It was a fourth stage win of this year's Tour for the 26-year-old, who is now 14 shy of Mark Cavendish’s record.
A day after he underlined his dominance so far with a solo win on the Hautacam, Pogacar extended his lead over Vingegaard to four minutes and seven seconds, and barring misfortune, it is hard to see how anyone can stop him winning a fourth title.
“I’m super happy,” said Pogacar. “This time trial was quite a big question mark already in December for me. I wanted everything to be perfect and the team delivered in the final moments for everything to be on top.
“I had an easy day in the morning, a nice preparation and then I was really targeting to go from the start to the finish all out and try to smash it as much as possible on the pedals.
“I almost blew up in the end, but I saw the time [on the finish line screens] and it gave me an extra push because I knew I was going to win.”
After losing more than two minutes to Pogacar on Thursday, Vingegaard was much happier after catching a struggling Remco Evenepoel, his two-minute man, 50 metres from the line on the 15 per cent gradients at the top of the runway.
“Of course, yesterday was really disappointing,” the two-time Tour winner, who cracked when Pogacar accelerated on the lower slopes of Hautacam, said. “I hoped for more, but in the end I was just a bit empty.
“Yesterday was probably one of my worst performances, but today was one of my best, so it’s nice to come back like this.”
Both Vingegaard and Evenepoel, the world time trial champion, were among a handful of riders who opted to go with adapted time trial bikes, while Pogacar chose a road bike and made the decision pay.
Having shipped more than two minutes to both Pogacar and Vingegaard, Evenepoel barely hung on to third place overall and the best young rider’s white jersey, just six seconds ahead of Florian Lipowitz.
Lipowitz and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe teammate Primoz Roglic both put in brilliant performances, Slovenian Roglic finishing third on the stage at 1’20” behind Pogacar.
The 22-year-old Scot Oscar Onley is also definitely part of the fight for the podium, up to fifth overall, eight minutes off yellow but only 47 seconds behind Evenepoel.
“Looking at the times now, it looks like we were all suffering a little bit, but I did what I could," Onley said.
“With the steep runway at the end, I just had to hold back a little bit, but it was difficult with the rest of the climb just an uncomfortable gradient.”
It was a second consecutive bad day for Evenepoel, who said he had “no idea” why he had struggled.
“With a normal feeling, I should end up in the top three, but I was really bad,” he said.
