Jonas Wingegaard and Tadej Pogačar fight for Tour de France again

The main cycling race, the Tour de France, which started last weekend, may well turn into a rivalry between its two seemingly too obvious favorites – Slovenian Tadej Pogacar from UAE Team Emirates, who won the French stage race in 2020 and 2021, and Dane Jonas Vingegor from Jumbo Visma. Both youngsters have been in great shape throughout the season and both seem to fit the current Tour’s route, which is dominated by difficult mountain stages.

Tuesday’s fourth leg of the current Tour de France, from Dax to Nogaro, was the first to run entirely within France. The organizers of the stage race, in order to emphasize its trans-European, or something, character, the magnitude of the scale, often arrange a start abroad. This time it was presented to Spain, more precisely, Bilbao and the Basque Country, in which Tour stayed for three days before moving to his homeland. So there’s nothing special here.

feature in another. The trend towards an increase in the number of mountains on the multi-day route appeared a long time ago. But in 2023, it appears, perhaps, brighter than ever.

Tour de France consists of 21 stages. And only eight of them, including the Tuesday one, are officially called flat – flat, flat. On such, as a rule, something interesting happens only at the finish line, in sprint showdowns. There are exactly the same number of pure mountain mountains, in the Pyrenees, the Massif Central, the Alps and the Vosges, half – with a finish on the rise, promising the coolest adventures in an attempt to climb in the general classification, as well as a terrible waste of strength and energy. There is also one cutting and four stages, which are commonly called “hilly”. Some of the complexity is not too different from the mountains. Moreover, they also included two starting, Basque, although in the tradition of the Tour de France there has always been a calm dispersal. Now the riders have been deprived of it, forcing them to turn on immediately.

Briton Adam Yates from UAE Team Emirates arrived in France as the leader of the race. But, of course, all discussions regarding the main intrigue of the race still revolve around the other two riders – Yates’ teammate Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Wingegaard from Jumbo-Visma.

Pogacar, a 24-year-old child prodigy, stunned everyone in 2020 by winning his debut Tour de France in his short-lived professional career, and repeated his success in 2021. Vingegor, who is slightly older than the Slovenian (he is 26), stunned everyone with the swiftness of the path from complete obscurity, participation in second-rate competitions to superstar status. He did it in a couple of years, and last year he convincingly beat the already almost invulnerable Pogachar on the Tour.

There is nothing strange in the fact that in all bookmakers they are quoted against the background of competitors about as high as Real Madrid and Barcelona are quoted against the background of rivals before the start of any Spanish championship, there is nothing strange. The specifics of the Tour de France route are quite suitable for both. Both Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard love mountains and are able to endure.

At the same time, in the spring they showed crazy form, winning competition after competition in any format – both multi-day races and classic one-day races, with intricate terrain and simpler terrain. In the case of Vingegor, experts first of all pay attention to the Criterium de Dauphine. This week-long race is considered a warm-up or key test before the Tour de France. So, the Dane won it, breaking away from the nearest competitor – the same Adam Yates – by almost two and a half minutes. This is a gigantic, phenomenal, in fact, advantage.

Tadej Pogacar did not participate in the Criterium de Dauphine. In April, being in a chic tone, which allows him to easily deal with any rivals, including the same Wingegaard, he unsuccessfully fell at the Bastogne-Liège-Bastogne race and broke his wrist. I had to heal and recover.

Actually, this fact was the only argument for those who looked with caution at the immediate prospects of the Slovenian, who managed to “warm up” before the Tour only at the national championship. But, apparently, Pogachar did not wishful thinking when he said that the fracture did not in the least prevent him from approaching the legendary French stage race in optimal condition. In any case, he drove through the Basque part of it very cheerfully and even managed to create a safety margin relative to Vingegor. Rather, however, symbolic, given how many more trials await cyclists – in 11 seconds.

Alexey Dospekhov