Tourreporter
On the second stage, the Tour de France sees a battle between the favorites. Tadej Pogacar challenges his competitors. He has to admit that Jonas Vingegaard is in top form.
Tadej Pogacar was lucky. Unlike Jonas Vingegaard, who had to struggle a long way along the Via dell’Indipenzia in Bologna with his bike: the crowds that had previously positioned themselves along the route had now largely moved here to catch a glimpse of the pros at the team buses. The bus of Vingegaard’s team Visma-Lease A Bike was parked quite far back, but the Dane somehow managed to get through.
“A small victory” for Vingegaard
“It was a small victory for me,” said Vingegaard, once he was safely behind the barrier at the team bus. Of course, he wasn’t referring to the ride through the crowd, but to the fact that he had previously passed a first test that Pogacar had imposed on him and the other competitors for the overall victory.
While Frenchman Kévin Vauquelin rode solo to win the stage, Pogacar tested his competitors behind him during the second crossing of the short but very steep climb up to the San Luca Chapel with one of his explosive attacks. Only Vingegaard was able to follow the attack, while neither Remco Evenepoel nor Primoz Roglic were able to do so.
Pogacar is not surprised
As a spectator, you could almost be glad that Vingegaard’s team arrived wearing a new blue-green jersey and not the yellow and black that earned them the nickname “the killer wasps.” Otherwise, you would have thought you were watching a recording from the past two years, when the two raced down the slope to Bologna together.
But this was a repeat of the Pogacar-Vingegaard duel. “I wanted to test the legs of the others,” said Pogacar, who had been spared the crowd bath because he was given the yellow jersey at the finish. “Jonas was very strong, but that was no surprise to me.”
“We feared the stage”
Vingegaard only had six and a half weeks after his fatal crash at the Tour of the Basque Country to get himself into Tour shape. He himself did not know how good he would really be, knowing full well that Pogacar would put him to the test early on. “To be honest, that was the stage we feared the most,” said Vingegaard. “We even expected that I would lose time today.”
So Vingegaard is a force to be reckoned with at this Tour de France. That was the realization of the day – also for Vingegaard. “I myself had doubts about whether I could be the old Jonas,” he said. “And it’s really nice to be able to say: I’m back.”
Evenepoel makes “a small mistake”
Remco Evenepoel did at least come back. The Belgian, one of the four top favorites to win the Tour, had also missed Pogacar’s attack. He later explained this by saying that he had already used up too much energy because he was positioned too far back on the climb, which was up to 20 percent steep. When he had worked his way back to the front, Pogacar’s attack followed shortly afterwards. “A small mistake, but in the end it turned out well,” said Evenepoel.
Sportschau Tourfunk, 30.06.2024 19:08
Primoz Roglic, the fourth in the group, could not claim the same. The captain of the Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe team crossed the finish line 21 seconds behind the others. That is now the gap that separates him from the other three in the overall ranking after two days. That is not much, but it is still a disadvantage.
Roglic doesn’t have the legs
“You just have to be there right away,” said the team’s sports director, Rolf Aldag, about the moment of the attack. But Roglic wasn’t and later had a simple explanation for it. “I didn’t have the legs,” said the Slovenian. “But it was also a special day.”
The second stage from Cesenatico to Bologna was, like the day before, characterized by heat and ups and downs through the Apennines, although not quite as hot or as demanding as the day before. Nevertheless, ice vests remained the most popular utensil before and after the stage. Ice packs were stuffed under the jerseys and in the socks along the way.
“We trained a lot in the cold and rain, maybe we weren’t prepared for the heat so well,” said Aldag, looking for another explanation for Roglic’s failure to catch up. Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe do not expect any serious consequences for the rest of the race. “If that was our bad day at the Tour, then we can live with it,” said Aldag.
Pogacar thinks yellow is “so, so”
On Monday, there will be a break in the battle for yellow on the last stage to take place entirely in Italy. The route from Piacenza to Turin is largely flat. This will give the sprinters their chance to win a stage after all their torment at the start.
That is probably what Tadej Pogacar wanted. He would probably have preferred it if Romain Bardet had kept the yellow jersey. The Frenchman, however, finished with Roglic’s group and was six seconds short of another day in yellow.
“I see,” said Pogacar about the fact that he is now in the overall lead. With the leader’s jersey on his shoulders, his team must now take responsibility for the race. However, the UAE team can be sure that the sprint teams will support them in this, so that any breakaway riders really have no chance and it becomes a mass sprint.
The next test follows on the Galibier
On the other hand, it’s nice to wear yellow again after he came so close last year but didn’t manage to win it. Now it’s up to his competitors to snatch the coveted piece of clothing from him. Most notably Jonas Vingegaard, who gained a lot of confidence that day. “I really hope that I’ll have three good weeks now.”
Pogacar will probably be put to the test again on Tuesday on the third stage. The Tour then comes to France, the route leads over the Galibier.
