Tadej Pogacar delivered a display of pure dominance on the first true mountain test of this year’s Tour de France to retake the yellow jersey with a solo win.
On the Hautacam, where Jonas Vingegaard left Pogacar behind in a decisive attack in his 2022 Tour win, the world champion exacted revenge, attacking 12 kilometres from the summit finish and putting two minutes 10 seconds into his rival, who finished second on the day.
Pogacar's third stage win of this Tour, the 20th of his career, put him a big step closer to what would be a fourth overall title as he leads by three minutes 31 seconds from Vingegaard, with both men putting time into third-placed Remco Evenepoel, now four minutes 45 seconds down.
Irishman Ben Healy, who took yellow out of a breakaway on stage 10, struggled in the heat and it was no surprise to see him hand over yellow, shipping 13 and a half minutes on the 180.6km stage from Auch.
There were questions over how Pogacar might be feeling as he started the day bandaged up on his right side following a crash late on Wednesday's stage into Toulouse, but by the finish line there was no doubt about his status as the class of this field.
The riders were barely on to the Hautacam, the first hors categorie climb of this Tour at an average gradient of 7.9km over 13.5km, when Pogacar burst off the wheel of team-mate Jhonatan Narvaez, with Vingegaard unable to keep up.
Pogacar gradually pulled further and further clear, and such was his level of control he even had the wherewithal to point out a passing camera operator had a fan's placard stuck to their motorbike inside the final two kilometres.
“I almost already forgot (about the Hautacam stage in 2022) and was just looking forward to today, then all the people came to me saying all the time about this, ‘Is this revenge time?’ Then when we approached the bottom of the climb it was the reverse story of a few years ago,” he said.
“For sure you don't know how the body reacts after a crash, but it was not too bad a crash. I feel my hip only if I do acrobatics, but here riding the bike it's not big flexing.”
Pogacar dedicated his stage win to Samuele Privitera, the 19-year-old Italian development rider who died after a crash at the Giro della Valle d'Aosta on Wednesday.
“This stage can go for Samuele, to all his family,” he said. “It was really sad, it was the first thing I read in the morning, and I was thinking in the last kilometre about him and how tough this sport can be, and how much pain it can cause.”
Evenepoel was among several riders appearing to struggle in temperatures in the mid-30s. He slipped back on the Soulor and although he recovered on the descent, the Belgian was quickly dropped again on the Hautacam, conceding three and a half minutes to Pogacar.
For Healy his second day in yellow was one of suffering too. He survived longer than Evenepoel on the Soulor but once he was dropped, his deficit ballooned as the breakaway specialist found the challenge of hanging with the general classification riders too much.
But Young Scot Oscar Onley, 22, was again up to that task for almost all of the day, just losing a two-up sprint against Tobias Halland Johannessen for fourth place, and moved up to sixth overall.
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