On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 8/1/2022
A Jumbo Helping of Tour de France
It’s August again and that means it’s time for my review of the recently concluded Tour de France. And what a tour it was! One of the best in recent memory in terms of drama and heroics and even good sportsmanship (aka classy behavior).
Last August’s column in this space was titled No Doubt About It. Tadej Pogačar (UAE) dominated the Tour and pretty well turned the whole three-week affair into a snooze fest. A lovely travelogue around France but not much in the way of edge-of-the-seat, nail-biting suspense. But as Shakespeare has it, “The past is prologue,” and some of what happened last year foreshadows what happened this year.
Pogačar’s supposed chief rival last year was Jumbo-Visma’s Primoz Roglič. But he crashed on Stage 3 and eventually abandoned, partly because of his nagging injuries and partly to rest up and prepare for the Vuelta, which he won. That left JV’s Plan B—Jonas Vingegaard—to do battle with Pogačar. And a fine battle he made of it, finishing second in his first grand tour. He even put Pogačar in a little difficulty on le Mont Ventoux…the only moment we ever saw the all-conquering Slovenian looking even remotely vulnerable.
Fast-forward to this year. I reviewed the spring season and the Giro d’Italia in prior columns, but there were a few significant races between the Giro and the Tour. Two little pictures seemed prescient coming out of those races. Roglič won the Critérium du Dauphiné (June 5-12). On the final mountaintop finish, Roglič and Vingegaard finished at the head of the race, with enough time in hand to cruise over the line arm in arm. Vingegaard got the stage win and finished second behind Roglič in the GC. The message was clear: “We are strong and we are a team with a two-pronged leadership. We can attack you on two fronts.”
A couple of weeks later, Pogačar won the Tour of Slovenia. On the final mountaintop finish, he rolled across the line arm in arm with his best mountain lieutenant, Rafal Majka. They seemed to be replying to Jumbo’s challenge: “We too are a strong team and we have many ways to beat you.” At about the same time—June 12-19—Geraint Thomas (Ineos-Grenadiers) was comfortably winning the Tour de Suisse, thereby anointing himself as team leader for the other strongest team lining up for the Tour.
Now for the Tour. Primoz Roglič was once again billed as Pogačar’s biggest rival, with Vingegaard again in the role of Jumbo’s second option, should Roglič falter. Sure enough, Roglič crashed on Stage 5, tangling with a hay bale that had been dislodged onto the road in a roundabout. He dislocated his shoulder and had to put it back in himself. (Don’t try this at home.) He continued but was unlikely to be at full strength, not to mention losing almost three minutes. So, unofficially at least, the mantle of team leader once again passed to Plan B Vingegaard.
Post-race scuttlebutt seems to indicate Roglič may have been hurt a bit worse than the team let on at the time. They played their cards close to the vest on that one. And Roglič is nothing if not tough and fairly impervious to pain. So he kept on riding but now more in the role of Vingegaard’s top domestique.
Allow me to digress for a moment. I watched the final week of the Tour during a family reunion at our beach house up in Oregon. I was in company with assorted relatives, some of whom sat with me to watch the Tour unfold. All of those who were interested enough to sit through the stages were none-too-well-versed in the lore and strategy and nuance of bike racing, especially stage racing. They asked me all sorts of questions that any savvy cyclist would not have to ask. For instance: “What’s the point of all those teammates who aren’t likely to win the Tour? What are they doing?”
I was reminded of something we all should know but perhaps forget: that stage races can be opaque and inexplicable to the sometimey fan, to all those who only dip into bike racing for a couple of weeks in July each year. Having at least a modest understanding of the tactics that animate the racing has never been more important than it was this year, where we were given a superb demonstration of what all those teammates are there for.
Pogačar won Stage 6 with a sparky little uphill sprint out of a small group. That got him into the yellow jersey, with Vingegaard at : 31, Thomas at :46, and Roglič way down in 28th after his crash. The next stage was the first really serious mountain finish and Pogačar won again, although equal on time with Vingegaard. Roglič was :12 back and Thomas :14 in arrears. That left the GC battle after seven stages with Pogačar first, Vingegaard at :35 and Thomas at 1:10. Roglič was now up to 13th but still 2:45 back.
At this point it looked like deja vu from 2021: Pogačar in control, cheerfully taking care of business. But a flinty-eyed look at the details allowed his rivals some room for optimism. First of all, UAE lost two riders to COVID positives. Add to that the fact that his remaining teammates were not really doing all that well. Some were pretty much non-factors, out the back and pretty much useless as domestiques. Rafal Majka and Brandon McNulty were sometimes seen helping their team leader well up into the bigger hills but not much and not too impressively. Meanwhile, Jumbo-Visma often had as many as five or six riders around Vingegaard all race long, or at least onto the last climb on the uphill stages.
The records will list one rider as the winner of a stage race but it is a team sport. An exceptional rider can sometimes win a major stage race without a strong team but it’s a rare accomplishment. Usually the best team wins. Such was the case this year.
That became abundantly evident on Stage 11, with the three back-to-back climbs of Télégraphe (7.4 miles at 7%), Galibier (11 miles at 7%), and the col du Granon to finish (7 miles at 9%). The UAE worker bees were already in trouble on Télégraphe and an attack by Jumbo-Visma over the summit and down into Valloire saw all Pogačar’s helpers falling away from the leaders. On the early miles heading up the massive Galibier, Vingegaard and Roglič went to work on Pogačar. They tag-teamed him. Taking turns, they launched one stinging attack after another. Short, sharp shots up the road. In each case, Pogačar had to respond, chasing down whichever of the two had fired off up the hill.
Roglič and Vingegaard were switching off with the attacks, first one, then the other. When one attacked, the other one could sit back and more slowly reel them back, expending less energy. But Pogačar had to put in a hard dig every time one of the Jumbos launched. So he was having to make twice as many of these hard bursts as his two rivals. It adds up. You might think Pogačar could have afforded to ignore Roglič, who was still down in 13th, almost 3 minutes back. But he couldn’t really take that chance. Recall that Roglič first introduced himself to the cycling world by going off the front on this very same climb in the 2017 Tour and winning by a wide margin. He probably couldn’t do that today but who knows?
Some way up the climb, Pogačar’s teammate Marc Soler finally clawed back up to the leaders. But no sooner had he arrived than Roglič attacked again and off the back went Soler. Then Pogačar made what I think was a mistake. Fed up with the incessant attacks from his two rivals, he went to the front and put in a big pull of his own, as if to say, “Hey, I’m in charge here!” Only all it did was wear him out a little bit and, more importantly, distanced his own teammates. All this time, Pogačar wasn’t getting much in the way of food or fluids. There may be the neutral water moto but no high-energy liquids and no food. He can’t go back to the team car and his domestiques can’t get up to him to bring him anything. Team sport, remember?
Over the top of Galibier and all the way along the Lauteret descent, he had no resupply. Finally, just before the start of the final climb, Majka got back up to him and brought him things to eat and drink. But it was too late. Whatever he took on then wouldn’t be processed and out into his system in time. He would eventually run out of fuel, out of calories. We’ve all been there. We know the feeling…the bonk.
Halfway up the fearsome Col du Granon, there came a point where he could not respond to the tempo being set by Vingegaard. (Roglič and all the other Jumbo boyz had done their work by then and it was just Vingegaard vs Pogačar.) Vingegaard won the stage and Pogačar faded to 7th, conceding 2:51 on the day. That put him 2:22 behind on GC.
Given Pogačar’s recent history of dominance in pretty much every race he’s entered, I doubt too many people would have predicted such a day. A loss perhaps, but by six seconds or something equally inconsequential. Not almost three minutes in a couple of miles. With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, we can say the Tour was essentially over the minute Pogačar lost Vingegaard’s wheel on that last brutal climb. It may have looked like a mano a mano battle between those two riders, and it was, by some manner of reckoning. But it was also a master class in team tactics from Jumbo-Visma over the course of the whole stage: how they isolated Pogačar and left him vulnerable, without the resources even the most gifted riders need to make the wheels go around.
Pogačar didn’t give up. He said he’d fight every day and he did, although none of it amounted to much and his team continued to look weak. (McNulty pulled like a train on at least one stage but in the end it didn’t gain them anything.) Meanwhile, the Jumbos were protecting Vingegaard every day: Christophe Laporte, Tiesj Benoot, Sepp Kuss, Wout van Aert…they were always where they were supposed to be. It wasn’t quite all bright sunshine for the team though. On Stage 15, Steven Kruijswijk, crashed out and got an ambulance ride to the hospital. On the same day, Roglič abandoned to heal his wounds and prepare for the upcoming Vuelta…much like last year.
The other really exciting stage was 18, in the Pyrenées, offering up three monster ascents: Col d’Aubisque (10.6 miles at 7%), Col de Spandelles (6.3 miles at 8.3%) and finally Hautacam (8.4 miles at 8%). If Pogačar was going to break Vingegaard, this would be where it would happen. Here or nowhere, now or never.
Pogačar and Vingegaard went over the Spandelles summit together and alone, then did the long, sometimes technical descent together. On one left-hand corner, Vingegaard’s rear wheel left the ground and hopped sideways, often a prelude to an ugly, over-the-top crash. Somehow he saved it, an amazing bit of bike handling. Just a few corners later, Pogačar overcooked it into another left-hander and plotted a tangent off the outside of the corner. He got onto the gravel and then the grass and then he was down. He hopped right back on the bike and was going again in a few seconds but by then Vingegaard was out of sight around the next bend.
There is an unwritten bit of etiquette in racing that says when a rider is delayed by a flat or mechanical or something not his fault, his rivals will sit up and wait for him. It isn’t always observed but is fairly common and if you don’t do it, the reporters are going to ask you why you didn’t. However, if a rider crashes on a descent because of his own screw-up—operator error—no one is obliged to wait. Good descending is a skill you’re supposed to have in your tool box. If you mess up, too bad. See ya later.
That didn’t happen this time. Vingegaard saw Pogačar crash. It happened right in front of him. When Pogačar got going again, two or three bends down the hill, he found Vingegaard soft-pedaling, waiting for him. It was a classy thing to do and Pogačar saluted him for it. When my non-cycling relatives saw that, they were all impressed. You don’t have to understand the subtleties of cycling to appreciate that sort of sportsmanship.
While all this was going on, Vingegaard’s teammates Sepp Kuss and Tiesj Benoot were catching back on and were there for him at the beginning of the ginormous final climb to Hautacam. And have we mentioned Wout van Aert? He was up the road in a breakaway. He was in the breaks a lot during the Tour, consolidating his lead in the Points (sprints) competition, which he won with a record-setting points total. So that’s three teammates to help Vingegaard on the long climb. First Benoot put in a major pull on the front, shelling most of their rivals off the back. Then Sepp Kuss took over and pulled and pulled and pulled. When he was done, only Pogačar was left with Vingegaard. And when Kuss was done, he neatly handed the job over to Wout van Aert, who was the only one left out of the original breakaway.
What can we say about Wout van Aert? One of the best riders of his generation, for sure. So insanely talented. He can sprint. He can time trial. He can do it all…almost. But at 6’3” and 172 pounds—40 pounds heavier than Vingegaard—just a little too beefy to be a GC winner in a major stage race. Or so the conventional thinking goes. But geez, who wouldn’t want to climb as well as this guy who isn’t supposed to be a good climber? There he was, almost all the way to the summit of this monster ascent, still hammering away (in his green sprinter’s jersey). Kuss hands Vingegaard and Pogačar over to him and he powers up the hill, putting in the final dig that pops Pogačar off the back. He gives it his all and then pulls over to allow Vingegaard to take the stage. And the Tour.
It was another textbook display of team tactics, team efficiency. To add a little frosting to the cake, they managed to put Christophe Laporte in position to win Stage 19 and then van Aert won the time trial on Stage 20. Vingegaard might have won the time trial himself. He was ahead of van Aert’s time splits at all the intermediate time checks. But he eased off at the end just enough to allow van Aert to win the ITT.
In the end, Jumbo-Visma nearly won everything. Vingegaard won the maillot jaune as the overall champion and also the maillot pois as best climber. And van Aert won the maillot vert as best sprinter. The only jersey they didn’t win was best young rider, which went to Pogačar (which seems kind of strange: best young rider after having won the Tour twice already). He won’t win that jersey again. He’ll be 24 next year and no longer a “young rider.” You can be sure of one thing: Pogačar will be back next year and won’t be satisfied unless he can trade in that white jersey for a yellow one.
Every Grand Tour has its own character, its quirks of fate, its magical moments. This one had more than its share. Can we expect a repeat next year? The same heads of state duking it out to the same conclusion? Too many bumps and bends and potholes in the road between now and then to start making predictions. For now, let’s sit back and savor what just happened. It was epic. It was a classic.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net