The Tour de France didn’t formally end on the upper reaches of the Cime de la Bonette, but it was the point where Jonas Vingegaard understood that his race was run. Like a beaten candidate on election night, the projections from stage 19 told him that he no longer had a viable path to final victory in Nice.
Vingegaard’s concession didn’t come in a private telephone call to Tadej Pogačar but in a short radio message to his Visma-Lease a Bike teammates, confirming that he didn’t have the strength to execute the plan of attack they had drawn up beforehand.
On the Col de le Loze 12 months ago, when the roles were reversed, the moment was captured for posterity. When Pogačar was dropped, his forlorn radio message – “I’m gone, I’m dead” – was broadcast on television almost immediately. Vingegaard’s precise wording on Friday will doubtless mean we will have to wait for next year’s Netflix instalment, but his actions here already told us all we needed to know.
Visma’s Matteo Jorgenson and Wilco Kelderman had been dispatched up the road in the early break, but when the 2,800m summit of the Bonette came and went without a Vingegaard attack, it was abundantly clear that the Dane had resigned himself to the inalienable truth of this race – Pogačar is simply on another level.
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