But, of course, the Tour still has to be run and, in cycling as in life, anything can happen. But one thing that I think will not happen is that Vingegaard and Evenepoel will close the gap to the Slovenian enough to make the Tour competitive once it hits the big mountains. The gap is too great and the time is too short.
For the record, Pogačar won his first Dauphiné by 59 seconds over Vingegaard, with Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe) finishing third, at 2:38, and Evenepoel fourth, 4:21 adrift. And he did it without really breaking a sweat.
The gap
Pogačar won three of the eight stages, including the stage 1 sprint to the finish against his two GC rivals and Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck). He also won the two big mountain stages, including the queen stage, Saturday’s stage 7, which included more than 5,000 meters of altitude gain. The official results of that stage say that he beat Vingegaard by only 14 seconds, but that flatters the Dane because Pogačar spent much of the final climb to the summit at the Valmeinier 1800 ski resort (16.5km @ 6.7%) in cruise control, and actually sat up in the final kilometer.
Had he raced to win by the largest possible margin, as he will in the Tour, he probably would have won by at least a minute, as he did on stage 6 – where he also seemed to take it easy once he’d opened up a gap. And if he’d raced at full throttle throughout the race, the final margin would have been at least twice as big, if not more.
Meanwhile, Evenepoel finished stage 7 in fifth place, 2:39 behind, also beaten by the surprisingly strong Lipowitz, at 1:21, and Tobias Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility), at 2:26. These riders were working hard to keep the gap to Pogačar manageable – except maybe for Johannessen, who always rode behind Evenepoel and so was able to outsprint him on the final section.
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Injuries and training
This doesn’t mean that the world champion will never lose a Tour again. Just not this year. He has benefited from having been injury-free since 2023 and doing a lot of his preparation in actual races. He rode a full (and very successful) spring Classics schedule, while Vingegaard had only one complete race this year, the Tour of Algarve, which he won. He then crashed on stage 5 of Paris-Nice, suffered a concussion, which kept him from racing in the Volta a Catalunya.
There is no better training for races than racing. The two-time Tour winner certainly came out of the Dauphiné stronger than he was before the race. But, you know, so did Pogačar. Vingegaard looked better on the final climb of stage 8 than he did on the last ascent of stage 7. But, in his magisterial relaxation, so did Pogačar. As strong and courageous as Vingegaard is, he will have to be satisfied with yet another second-place finish behind his big rival next month.
The story might be different in 2026. Because by then he will certainly have overcome the after-effects of his big crash in the Tour of the Basque Country in spring of last year. Yes, that was well over a year ago, but a bad crash and a long convalescence affect the body of a top-level athlete for a long time. Look at Egan Bernal, who is finally rounding into form following his life-threatening training crash in 2022. He is in his best form since that accident, but he is still not the rider he was before he rode into the back of a stopped bus.
The same is true of Evenepoel, who also had a big spring Classics schedule, but he doesn’t seem to be the rider he was before his training crash in December. He’ll ride better in the Tour, but it won’t be good enough, I’m afraid. He too will be close to his best next year – or perhaps as early as this year’s Vuelta, if he rides in it.
In fairness, though, Evenepoel finished seventh in last year’s Dauphiné, behind clearly inferior riders, and then finished third in the Tour, so he will surely improve. But he finished more than 9 minutes behind Pogačar. So…
The future
Lipowitz’s strong showing and podium finish is not such a big surprise. He showed great climbing ability last year while working for teammates Primož Roglič and Aleksandr Vlasov. But his terrific ITT, in which he finished fifth, just eight seconds behind Pogačar, was a revelation. The 24-year-old German may never win the Tour de France, certainly not until after both Pogačar and Vingegaard have retired, but in a Giro or Vuelta without those two, he looks like he has the stuff to win.
Will 18-year-old Paul Seixas (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team) live up to the promise he has started showing at such a young age? He finished 10th in the ITT, 16 seconds behind Lipowitz, and crossed the line 3:51 behind Pogačar on stage 7. He was sixth in the GC when he crashed on the final climb of the race on Sunday and damaged his bike. He raced on with a bent handlebar and, for some reason, was never given another bike. So he ended up eighth in the final standings, 8:25 behind Pogačar, still a remarkable performance for a teenager. He has an enormous upside that would, I believe, be better served by riding for a team with more funds.
And what about 25-year-old Matteo Jorgenson, who finished third in the ITT, just 37 seconds behind Evenepoel, the world’s best time trial rider? His sixth-place finish in the GC was achieved while riding in support of Vingegaard. When will he have the chance to ride for his own glory? He looks very strong every time he rides with purpose, whether on a climb or on the flat.
Bahrain-Victorious’s Lenny Martinez, who seemed seriously out of sorts and was way down in the GC after seven stages, joined the breakaway in Sunday’s final stage and found himself in front with Movistar veteran Enric Mas. The 21-year-old Frenchman dropped Mas on the final climb, the Col du Mont-Cenis (9.6km @ 6.9%), with 7.3 km left to ride in the 133.3km course from Val-d’Arc to the Plateau du Mont-Cenis, and rode alone to the finish line, finishing 33 seconds ahead of Vingegaard and Pogačar.
This was the final gesture of the Slovenian’s superiority. He did not ride away from Vingegaard and try to win the stage. And he let the Dane finish ahead of him. This probably wasn’t generosity or showmanship. The Critérium du Dauphiné GC victory was the 99th win of his career. If he’d also won the stage, it would have made for 100 wins. I think, showman that he is, that Pogačar wants to record that watershed victory in the Tour de France. Think of the headline: World’s Greatest Cyclist Records 100th Victory in World’s Greatest Race.
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