Tadej Pogačar has played down any notion that his team is crumbling around him at this Tour de France, putting a positive spin on a day in which two more of his teammates went down with illness.
After Adam Yates suffered terribly with stomach problems on stage 17, UAE Team Emirates-XRG played down any talk of widespread illness ahead of stage 18, the first of a trio of mountain stages to finish the battle for the yellow jersey.
However, it soon became clear that was not the case, as Brandon McNulty and Tim Wellens both started to struggle early in the stage to the Orcières-Merlette ski resort. McNulty did not finish the stage, becoming the first rider down for UAE at this Tour, while Wellens only narrowly made the time cut as the last rider over the line.
McNulty and Wellens are understood to have throat issues, rather than the same gastrointestinal issues that Yates has.
“I’m really sad that today Brandon felt so bad and could not finish. We will miss him the next two days,” Pogačar said in his yellow jersey press conference after the stage.
“But yeah, Felix [Grossschartner] is riding super well, Nils [Politt] also, Isaac [Del Toro] is amazing. Adam is getting better, Tim also. If I put on him a bit of motivation then he always grabs it and goes through all the pain. Florian [Vermeersch] can be helpful from the start.”
The Tour now heads for a double dose of Alpe d’Huez, with Friday’s stage 19 taking the traditional hairpinned route up the famous mountain and Saturday’s monstrous stage approaching via the Col de Sarenne after three other high-mountain ascents.
“Tomorrow will be go with the flow, we survive tomorrow the stage, try to come to Alpe d’Huez and see what we can do,” Pogačar said.
“I think we can manage. It’s the third week, all the teams are a bit suffering. There are bodies everywhere, on a stage like today already. We will keep fighting, and I believe we can do it.
“Adam is getting better, but the problem is only he cannot refuel fast enough,” he added on France Télévisions. “He’s going to be okay, maybe not tomorrow, a big performance of Adam, but hopefully Saturday will be pretty good.”
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