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Pogačar Whips the ‘New’ Vingegaard on First Major Climb of the Tour

By Siegfried Mortkowitz

On Thursday’s stage 12 of the Tour de France, Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates–XRG) answered all the questions and replied to all the challenges Jonas Vingegaard and his Visma–Lease a Bike team had thrown at him over the first 11 stages of the race.

Riding away from a small group of GC contenders with a devastating burst of speed, he left Vingegaard and the other GC contenders gasping in the 34°C temperatures on the slopes of the HC (beyond category) Hautacam (13.1 km @ 7.8% with ramps of 15%) and took a huge step towards securing the fourth Tour de France victory of his career.

Pogačar flies up the Hautacam as Vingegaard jogs

Led out by teammate Jhonatan Narváez, Pogačar took off near the bottom of the ascent and with just a few pedal strokes had a lead of some 50 m over the Dane. Though Vingegaard fought hard, he was no match for the rider widely considered the greatest road racer of all time. By the time he crossed the finish line, overheated and grimacing, Vingegaard had lost 2:10 to the winner and now trails his rival by a whopping 3:31. Race over? Considering that the Hautacam was the first of many more brutal climbs to come, I would have to say yes.

The victory puts Pogačar in the yellow jersey for the third time as former race leader Ben Healy (EF Education–EasyPost) suffered in the heat and finished nearly 14 minutes behind the winner. The Slovenian also became the first world champion to win a summit finish in the Tour since Bernard Hinault did it in 1981.

“I knew the first time I rode Hautacam that it’s a super nice climb. I was always looking forward to riding it,” Pogačar told TNT Sports. “I’m super happy to take time and to win on this climb.” And just to let Vingegaard and other rivals know that they have exactly two chances to beat him, slim and none, when asked how he feels compared to previous Tours, he said, “Based on my feeling, I feel at the best moment of my career.”

He also paid tribute to Samuele Privitera, a 19-year-old rider for Jayco-AlUla’s development team, Hagens Berman Jayco, who died Wednesday after a crash on the opening stage of the Giro della Valle d’Aosta. “This stage can go for Samuele, to all his family,” Pogačar said. “It was really sad. It was the first thing I read in the morning, and I was thinking in the last kilometre about him and how tough this sport can be and how much pain it can cause.”

The Slovenian is a class act all the way, class on the road and class in his skin.

 

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Remco Evenepoel finished seventh in the stage, 3:35 behind the winner, and now sits in third, at 4:45. The Soudal Quick-Step leader was already dropped on the first big climb of the stage, the category 1 Col du Soulor (11.8 km @ 7.3%), but heroically made his way back to the group of favourites. But the Hautacam proved too steep, too long, and too hot for him. Friday’s stage 13 is an uphill ITT which may suit the world and Olympic time trial champion better, though the final section has gradients of up to 16%.

He now has to protect his place on the podium, and his best young rider’s white jersey, against the 24-year-old Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe), who was finally allowed to resign from his domestique duties for team leader Primož Roglič and pursue his own glory. The young German finished a terrific third in the stage, only 13 seconds behind Vingegaard, and now sits fourth, only 49 seconds behind Evenepoel.Pogačar and Vingegaard

As for Vingegaard, one has to wonder if all the public declarations and demonstrations of confidence were just smoke or if he really believed he had improved so much since Pogačar soundly beat him in the Critérium du Dauphiné. The ‘new Vingegaard’ turned out to be not as good as the old Vingegaard, who twice beat Pogačar in the Tour and never faltered as badly as he did Thursday on the Hautacam. If the race had been 1 km longer, Lipowitz would surely have caught him. Whatever the reason for the performance, you can’t argue with the conclusion of Visma’s head of racing, Grischa Niermann, who said, “In the end, the best rider won.”

Jonas Abrahamsen brings first Grand Tour win for Uno-X Mobility

It has been a wild and wacky Tour so far, and the wildest and wackiest stage of the race was Wednesday’s stage 11, in which two riders rode the entire 156.8 km course in and around Toulouse in a high-speed breakaway (average speed 48.016 km/h) while behind them all hell broke loose, so to speak.

At the end, Jonas Abrahamsen outsprinted Mauro Schmid by a whisker to take the second professional win of his career and give his Pro-level UNO-X Mobility team its first-ever Grand Tour victory. For the 29-year-old Norwegian late bloomer, the hard-fought victory came just four weeks after he broke his collarbone on the first stage of the Baloise Belgium Tour.

“I was crying in the hospital because I thought I wasn’t riding the Tour de France,” Abrahamsen said after his victory. “The day after, I was on the home trainer and hoping I could go to the Tour. Every day, I did everything I could to come back. So, to be here, having won a stage of the Tour de France, is amazing.”

In his and the team’s first Tour, last year, he collected a second place and a third, but he would not accept another close miss this year. “[Schmid] was so strong today from the start,” he said. “I tried and it was so difficult to pass him, but I was thinking ‘I have to win this stage, I have to,’ and then I got a wheel in front and that was so nice.”

It was not so nice for the courageous Schmid (Jayco AlUla), who was riding in his first Tour and, like Abrahamsen, went full gas from kilometre zero to the finish line. “I think after the rest day, a stage like this, there’s many guys like me who wanted to be in the break today because the stages from here will be quite hard or a sprint,” he explained on TNT Sports. “I think today was a really good opportunity.”

As a result, there were breakaway attempts throughout the first half of the stage, with different riders trying to join groups up front in what could be their last chance to win a stage. Eventually, two five-rider groups were in front of the peloton, the lead group with Abrahamsen and Schmid and a second group that included Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Wout van Aert (Visma–Lease a Bike). That made it hard for everyone.

The gap between the two groups vacillated between 20 and 30 seconds until van der Poel took off in hot pursuit on his own with 9 km left on the slope of the steep final climb of the stage (800 m @ 12.4% with ramps of up to 20%). He seemed to get closer to the pair with every stroke of his pedals, but fell 7 seconds short in the end.

To add to the chaos, a protester ran out onto the course near the finish line and was immediately tackled. And for even more drama, Pogačar crashed about 4 km from the finish line when Abrahamsen’s UNO-X teammate Tobias Halland Johannessen misjudged his turn and rode into the Slovenian’s path, clipping his handlebar. The world champion, who rarely crashes, slid across the asphalt and into the curb, but did not sustain any serious injuries. And he lost no time as the peloton, which contained his main rivals, sat up and waited for him.

“We waited for him, like we should do, in my opinion,” Vingegaard said. His Visma teammate Matteo Jorgenson added, “We’re trying to beat him in a sporting way.”

Good luck with that.

Results of Stage 12, 2025 Tour de France

  1. Tadej Pogačar, UAE Team Emirates–XRG 4:21:19
  2. Jonas Vingegaard, Visma–Lease a Bike +2:10
  3. Florian Lipowitz, Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe +2:23
  4. Tobias Halland Johanssen, Uno-X Mobility +3:00
  5. Oscar Onley, Picnic PostNL “
  6. Kévin Vauquelin, Arkéa–B&B Hotels +3:33
  7. Remco Evenepoel, Soudal Quick-Step  +3:35
  8. Felix Gall, Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale +4:02
  9. Primož Roglič, Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe +4:08
  10. Cristián Rodríguez, Arkéa–B&B Hotels +7:26

2025 Tour de France General Classification After Stage 12

  1. Tadej Pogačar, UAE Team Emirates–XRG 45:22:51
  2. Jonas Vingegaard, Visma–Lease a Bike +3:31
  3. Remco Evenepoel, Soudal Quick-Step +4:45
  4. Florian Lipowitz, Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe +5:34
  5. Kévin Vauquelin, Arkéa–B&B Hotels +5:40
  6. Oscar Onley, Picnic PostNL +6:05
  7. Primož Roglič, Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe +7:30
  8. Tobias Halland Johanssen, Uno-X Mobility +7:44
  9. Felix Gall, Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale  +9:21
  10. Matteo Jorgenson, Visma–Lease a Bike +12:12