Tourreporter
Status: 07.07.2024 22:11
Tadej Pogacar tries to attack several times on the gravel roads of Champagne. But at the end of the 9th stage of the Tour de France, everything remains as it was in the battle for the yellow jersey. Especially because his rival Jonas Vingegaard has other plans.
Primoz Roglic rolled up to the team bus in Troyes with a thick crust of dust and a broad grin on his face. Happy to be able to tick off the day that he and his team had been dreading so much. But now the 9th stage was over, and without any damage, neither temporally nor physically.
Roglic is happy that his team boss is not
“The most important thing is that I stayed in one piece,” said Roglic after the 199 kilometers through Champagne, 32.2 kilometers of which were on gravel roads in the famous vineyards of this region. What could have happened – a defect, a fall or some other mishap that could have cost the Slovenian time. But now he was standing here: dirty, tired, but happy “that I stuck with it.”
Roglic crossed the finish line at the same time as the other contenders for the Tour victory, 1’46 minutes behind the overjoyed day winner Anthony Turgis. That was the main goal of the day for Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe. Even if things got a bit tricky for Roglic a few times along the way. Which is why his team boss Ralph Denk later came to the conclusion, unlike his captain, that it was “not a good day for us.”
Roglics Team in der Defensive
The German World Tour team’s sports director Rolf Aldag also said that they had their “backs against the wall”. On the second of the 14 gravel sections, his colleagues Roglic had already finished far too far behind. On the rising terrain with deep gravel, they then ran into chaos.
Nico Denz, one of Roglic’s bodyguards, even had to get off and push his bike for a while, which is why he later called the whole thing a “circus”. Getting Roglic back into the group of favorites cost a lot of energy early on, which would have been better saved. As a result, Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe was repeatedly on the defensive later on.
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Vingegaard is not going
The fact that no major damage was caused was mainly thanks to Jonas Vingegaard. The Tour winner of the past two years had pursued a very similar goal on the white gravel roads of Champagne. “Our goal was not to lose any time,” explained the Dane with a dusty grey face.
Vingegaard and his team were obviously not interested in leaving Roglic behind. Much to the chagrin of Tadej Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel. “The race could have been decided 80 kilometers from the finish. But unfortunately Jonas decided not to ride with us. Which is understandable on the one hand, but not on the other,” complained Evenepoel.
There, the Belgian had himself initiated an attack on one of the gravel hills, which only Pogacar and Vingegaard had been able to follow. In no time at all, the trio had caught up with the ten-strong breakaway group and caused a lot of excitement there. But then, after a brief exchange, the three dropped back again.
Vingegaard takes over from Tratnik
“In all situations, we thought it would be better to have several teammates around me in case something happens,” Vingegaard later explained his refusal to cooperate. Probably also because he had an inkling early in the race of how quickly the day could have ended in disaster for him too. In one of the first gravel sectors, Vineggaard had a flat tire and so quickly took over the bike of his teammate Jan Tratnik. The Slovenian is roughly the same stature as his captain.
And because the Visma-Lease A Bike team traditionally leaves nothing to chance, they had already let Vingegaard try out Tratnik’s bike in the training camp. Vingegaard then rode through Champagne for the rest of the day with the starting number one on his back and the number seven on his bike, while Tratnik had to wait three minutes for a replacement bike, as he later reported.
Pogacar attacks tirelessly
For Vingegaard, this could have meant the end of his ambitions for yellow. And so on the fourth-to-last gravel section, he also refused to work with Pogacar, who was attacking tirelessly in the final phase, when both Roglic and Evenepoel had missed the connection and his teammate Matteo Jorgenson brought him close to the rear wheel of his rival.
“I expected that. They are probably underestimating Remco, Primoz and the others,” said Pogacar later, shrugging his shoulders. “We could have driven away, that’s how I see it. But everyone has their own race, that’s just how it is.” So in the end all the attacks in the battle for yellow crumbled to dust, but that didn’t really make anyone unhappy. “We all put on a pretty good race,” said a relieved Primoz Roglic. “The show wasn’t boring.” It continues after the rest day on Monday.
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