Any lingering hope that Tadej Pogačar might have nursed a comeback in the Tour de France evaporated completely around eight kilometres from the summit of the interminable Col de La Loze on Wednesday.
As the Slovenian slid slowly but surely out of the back of the yellow jersey group on stage 17, if reversing the tendency set by his time trial defeat on Tuesday already seemed difficult, on Wednesday, it simply became impossible.
Guided by UAE Team Emirates teammate Marc Soler, Pogačar endeavoured to limit the gap, but he was still nearly six minutes down at the line.
Barring further disasters, his podium position remained secure for now. But the widening of the GC gap between himself and Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) had gone from a slender 10 seconds on Monday to a daunting 1:48 on Tuesday, then to a staggering 7:35 by Wednesday evening.
UAE and Pogačar were seemingly at a loss to explain what had gone so badly wrong on the Loze, with head sports director Joxean Fernández Matxin insisting that they had gone into the stage with the idea of attacking.
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“I don’t know what happened,” Pogačar told reporters afterwards. “I tried to eat as much as possible but it was like nothing would go into my legs, everything stayed in my stomach. I was feeling so empty after three and a half hours. If I didn’t have such great support around me, I was thinking I could lose the podium today.
“But I was fighting all the way to the finish line, and I am very grateful to my teammates for their support.”
Pogačar crashed early in the stage, and the blood on the cut in one knee was visible for the remainder of what was a brutally-difficult day of Alpine climbing. But Pogačar seemed unconvinced that it had had too much of an effect.
“It doesn’t hurt that much, maybe it affected my body, but in any case today was not a good day.”
The echoes of Pogačar’s sudden loss of power on the Col du Granon in the 2022 Tour, which also cost him the race against Vingegaard, were unmistakable. But the Slovenian said what happened 12 months ago, when he lost just under three minutes to the Dane on the Granon rather than nearly double that on Wednesday at Courchevel, was far less serious.
“Even the stage to the Granon was better,” Pogačar said. “Today was one of the worst days of my life on the bike. Marc [Soler] kept on encouraging me to keep on fighting and I hope I can recover and perhaps go for another stage win on Saturday. I have to keep fighting.”
The one consolation prize for UAE Team Emirates on Wednesday was that Adam Yates managed to strengthen his third place on the podium, all but guaranteeing the Middle Eastern team the two of the top three places. But such was the scale of Pogačar’s defeat that Yates success was completely eclipsed by it.
Matxin said that rather than dwelling too long on the reasons for Pogačar’s sudden drop in power for now, “the most important thing for now is to support Tadej the person”.
“When you’re winning and you’re surrounded by the media singing your praises, you don’t need support. It’s now, in the difficult times, when you need to know that you have people you can count on.”
As for the exact reason why, Matxin said it remained unclear but doctors had said there was no question of it being an illness. Morale, he admitted had not been high after Tuesday’s time trial, or as he put it, “after losing 1:40, he was not starting in a great place either”.
Far than stage 17 being an exercise in damage limitation, Matxin said that UAE had gone into the Tour’s last Alpine stage with the aim of turning the race around and for that reason they had put two riders in the large early break.
“But as soon as we got to the second climb of the day [Cornet de Roseland], Tadej started saying he didn’t feel good and we had to switch things around, bring some riders back.”
Looking forward, the key thing in any case, he argued, was for Pogačar to “recover as well as possible and try and protect the podium.” As for Vingegaard, “all we can do is congratulate the strongest rider in this year’s race.”
