Tadej Pogacar exited the final mountain climbs with his lead over Jonas Vingegaard intact and now stands on the threshold of achieving a fourth Tour de France triumph in six seasons.
With the threat of neutralisation due to rain now hanging over the final stage in Paris on Sunday, routed over the cobbled climbs of the Butte Montmartre, the weary Pogacar may be almost home and dry. He leads his long-standing rival Vingegaard by almost four and a half minutes and barring any last day mishaps, the Slovenian’s fourth yellow jersey seems assured.
Tour organisers ASO confirmed in Pontarlier that any decision on neutralising the final stage would not be taken until Sunday afternoon and possibly during the stage itself.
“Anything can happen,” Pogacar said of the final day’s combination of climbing and sprinting, “but I’m not promising I’ll go for it. We’ll try to enjoy the yellow jersey in Paris.”
Alpecin-Deceuninck’s Australian Kaden Groves won the penultimate stage, from Nantua to Pontarlier, after breaking clear of a lead group in the final 16km. “There’s so much pressure in the Tour. All I ever get asked is: ‘Am I good enough to win in the Tour?’ Well, now I’ve shown them,” Groves, a stage winner in the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana, said.
The decisive action came on the descent of the final climb, the Côte de Longeville, 24km from Pontarlier. In the aftermath of a crash on a tight left-hand bend, Groves was among a group of three who moved clear. The 26-year-old then attacked alone in the final kilometres to win by almost a minute.
After well over three thousand kilometres of racing, an ingrained fatigue is now stalking the peloton with numerous riders sharing Pogacar’s obvious weariness, without enjoying the rewards of his success. Many admit to being wrung out by a Tour with a draining first 10 days and too many long transfers.
“I feel like a nap as soon as getting on the bus,” the Lidl-Trek rider Toms Skujins said during the Alpine stages. Pogacar said: “If you look at the power files throughout the whole Tour, it’s been really amazing and tough. Even though it was one of the hardest I ever did, I enjoyed it.”
Much has also been made of the Tour’s decision to augment Sunday’s traditional processional laps of the Champs-Élysées with three laps racing over the cobbled climbs in Montmartre. “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Vingegaard said. “Montmartre seemed very beautiful at the Paris Olympics, with a great atmosphere.”
“But when the riders arrived there, there were 50 in the peloton. Now there will be 150 of us fighting for position on a very narrow climb. It’s going to add more stress than we’d like.”
However, the threat of rain overshadows the plan and even the Tour’s director of racing, Thierry Gouvenou, acknowledged that the Parisian cobbles can be treacherous when wet. “We know with the slightest drop of rain, Paris is a real ice rink,” he said before the Tour. “We saw it in the Olympic Games time trial. It can turn into a catastrophe.”
If it does rain, then the Tour is likely to “freeze” the overall standings, to ensure that the general classification is not affected by a last-day crash. “The stage will be run, but the time will be frozen,” Gouvenou said.
Others have been dismayed by a Tour route that failed to crack the seemingly unflagging Pogacar, but instead shattered the reserves of many in the peloton. “The transfers have been longer and more poorly organised than any I have ever witnessed in some 20 Tours,” Jonathan Vaughters, manager of the EF Education EasyPost team said.
“Instead of trying to progress into a modern professional sport, ASO is looking for ways to regress the sport backwards in time. Ultimately, taking care of the athletes leads to better recovery, better health, and better racing.”
