The mood at the Visma-Lease a Bike bus is sombre after the finish of stage five of the 2025 Tour de France. For all the talk of aggressive racing and playing Tadej Pogačar at his own game, for all the hope that Jonas Vingegaard’s performances so far this year have given them, their morale has just taken a hefty blow in the form of a flying UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider blitzing around the French countryside on his time trial bike. After his surprise second place at the Dauphiné time trial just a few weeks ago, when Vingegaard was able to beat his rival by almost half a minute, Wednesday’s time trial at the Tour de France should have been better. There is no other way to put it: Tadej Pogačar has shown Visma-Lease a Bike that he is unequivocally the boss of this Tour de France.

“I have no explanation,” the team’s sports director, Grischa Niermann, said at the finish regarding Vingegaard's performance. “Before the time trial everything was good, there were no problems, but in the time trial he’s not able to talk to me, I’m only able to talk to him. We already heard after a few kilometres that he was eight seconds down on Remco [Evenepoel]. He then just lost time over the whole TT. I haven’t spoken with him yet but, of course, we hoped for more.”

“It changes nothing in our overall approach,” he added, looking ahead to the rest of the Tour. “We just go ahead as planned but we’re around 1:20 down on Tadej now, I guess, so we will have to find that time somewhere if Jonas wants to win the Tour. We didn’t expect that much of a loss. It happened though, we have to deal with it and we’ll fight again tomorrow.”

Image: Charly Lopez/ASO

The problem for Visma-Lease a Bike, and everyone else who has to compete against him, is that Pogačar is a championship rider. He is the best in the world for this very reason: when the stakes are at their highest, the Slovenian rider can step up to match them. You can never count him out. Stage five winner and time trial world champion Remco Evenepoel said as much in his post-race press conference.

“In terms of Tadej, his time trials at the Tour are always more than in other races, so it is not surprising. I maybe was expecting more of an advantage on him but on the moments he has to perform he does, this shows why he is the rider to beat in this Tour de France again,” the Belgian commented.

Pogačar himself, who is now in the race lead and will wear the yellow jersey into stage six, explained that he has put plenty of work into his time trial performance over the last few weeks which is why there has been such a marked improvement since the race against the clock he competed in last month.

“In Dauphiné, I paced myself completely wrong. I was really disappointed with the time trial, I looked at every detail of what I did wrong. I was also not hungry enough then,” the three-time Tour winner said after stage five. 

“I trained really well at Isola 2000 with the TT bike so I started to believe again in myself after Dauphiné that I could do better today. I found a good rhythm from start to finish. When I heard I was gaining time in the first 5km already, I got motivation and was mentally super strong all the way to the finish. I also heard Remco was not taking too much time which was more good motivation and I could really push to the finish line.”

The 26-year-old also added that he had expected more from Vingegaard, his long-time Tour rival: “I was a little bit surprised at Jonas' performance. I’m not going to lie, I was not expecting to be so far ahead of him in this time trial. I expected him to be closer to Remco than me but maybe he didn't have the greatest day out there. In the end he is also the lightest out of the three of us so he is not the best suited to this, but it’s a surprise to see this gap.”

Image: Charly Lopez/ASO

With Pogačar now holding a 42 second lead over Evenepoel and 1-13 lead over Vingegaard after only five stages, the signs are ominous for the rest of this race. As the cliché adage goes, the Tour de France is still long, but any hopes that Visma had of Vingegaard reclaiming his grasp on the yellow jersey this season are steadily dwindling into oblivion. Will the Dutch squad be able to refocus and try something new to break the spell of Tadej Pogačar? The UAE rider himself is adamant that he will not rest on his laurels and is expecting to have everything thrown at him as the Tour rolls on.

“I always have eyes on everybody, not just one guy. You cannot discount any of the general classification riders. After today you need to have the top-10 of the general classification in the mind and you look at them,” he explained.

“But in the end, of course Jonas is going to try the most, he is the most hungry to gain back time. We saw he is in super good shape and that his team is in really good form so they will try maybe tomorrow or the next day. I will not just watch one guy, I will focus on everyone, but mostly myself and how we ride the next few days.”

Cover image: Zac Williams/SWpix.com