If you’d tuned into Friday’s stage six of the Critérium du Dauphiné without any context, you’d be forgiven for believing you were watching a rerun from last year’s Tour de France. The last 8km followed a pattern that became all too familiar from that race: first UAE Team Emirates-XRG obliterated the peloton, reducing it to just a handful of riders with a viscous acceleration on the lower slopes of the final climb, then their leader, Tadej Pogačar, unleashed an attack, with only Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) able to respond, and soon Pogačar’s unrelenting pace was too much for his rival, who was dropped while he soloed the rest of the way to the finish to take the win.
Perhaps the most discernible difference was that this time Pogačar was wearing the rainbow stripes from the World Championships title he won last autumn, a visible symbol of superiority that epitomises the stranglehold he has in world cycling right now. And for those hoping that the gap between himself and the rest of the field — in particular Jonas Vingegaard — has closed since his demolition at the Tour de France last year, which he won by over six minutes as well as six stages, this stage was discouraging. Pogačar went on to win the stage by 1:01 ahead of Vingegaard, putting over eight seconds per kilometre into him on the short final climb. The next best rider, Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe), finished even further back at 1:22 adrift, while Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) was a distant 1:50, thus handing the yellow jersey to Pogačar.
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Leaving aside the Tour de France for a moment, this ride puts him firmly in control of the Dauphiné GC race, and on the verge of yet another major title. He now leads by 43 seconds ahead of Vingegaard, with just two more stages left to ride this weekend. Should he complete overall victory, it’ll be his 10th already this season, over the course of just 22 race days, and potentially even more if he can win either/both of the stages left to ride. He’s enjoying yet another extraordinary run every bit as prolific as his history-making 2024 campaign; by this time last year, he’d amassed 14 wins in 31 race days, at a similar rate of just under one triumph every other day.
For neutrals wanting a more competitive Tour de France this year, the hope was that Vingegaard could return to the form that saw him not only compete with but defeat Pogačar at both the 2022 and 2023 Tours de France. As awe-inspiring as it is to see an athlete as uniquely gifted as the Slovenian put in performances like these, it’s so much more exciting when he has a worthy adversary to challenge him, as was the case during the spring Classics when he went head-to-head with Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck). Visma-Lease a Bike were talking a big game, too, saying prior to the Dauphiné that, avoiding the injury complications that so drastically compromised his run-up to the 2024 Tour de France, they believed Vingegaard is the favourite for the yellow jersey ahead of Pogačar, claiming he has reached a whole new level.
But such bold talk was not backed up by Vingegaard’s performance on the road during stage six. The Dane only managed to hold Pogačar’s wheel briefly before being dropped, and rather than manage to limit his losses by riding a steady tempo, he continued to lose time all the way to the top. Ultimately, he finished closer to the riders behind him than Pogačar ahead, only 29 seconds separating him and his teammate Matteo Jorgenson, and with three other riders finishing within the 1:01, he trailed Pogačar by. He looked less like a rival to Pogačar, and more like the best of the rest.
So, should we conclude from what’s happened at the Dauphiné so far that this year’s Tour de France will be another one-man show? Not exactly. Post-race debates can be fickle, so much so that it’s easy to forget that just two days earlier, the talk was about how Pogačar was looking vulnerable. The reason he was wearing the rainbow stripes rather than the yellow jersey was because he had lost out in the first major GC showdown of the race. That was the stage four individual time trial that day, in which Pogačar was not only defeated by stage winner Remco Evenepoel, but also by Vingegaard, to whom he shed no less than 28 seconds. The expressions on the face of Jorgenson on the hot seat, as he witnessed Pogačar falling well short of the times posted by Vingegaard at the intermediate time checks, said it all — surprise, and barely contained excitement, that their formerly untouchable was suddenly looking human again.
It should be remembered that the terrain of stage six was much better suited to Pogačar than Vingegaard. None of the day’s five official climbs exceeded 6km in length, therefore favouring the punchy style of Pogačar rather than the steady climbing of Vingegaard. It’s notable that the stage-winning attack on the final climb was set up by puncheur Jhonatan Narváez rather than one of UAE Team Emirates-XRG's climbing domestiques. Just because Pogačar was able to distance Vingegaard on this terrain doesn’t mean we can extrapolate that he will do so on the longer, bigger mountains where the fate of the Tour de France will ultimately be decided.
We won’t have to wait long to find out if he can also drop Vingegaard on a proper mountain. Saturday stage seven of the Dauphiné contains no less than three hors category climbs, including a finish atop the summit of Valmeinier 1800, while Sunday’s finale is another feast of climbing culminating in a near-mountain-top finish. So far, Vingegaard has had the advantage in the time trial, and Pogačar on hilly terrain. Whoever gets the better of the other on these mountains will likely win the Dauphiné — and be elevated to favourite status for the Tour de France.
