UAE Team Emirates put an entire day of work yesterday at the Tour de France for a gain of eight seconds. Whether the effort was worth it or not has different answers for different people, the commentators on 'The Breakaway' show have voiced their opinion about it.
“We knew it was coming but I thought it would be sooner. It was an amazing attack, but for me we knew it was coming but that was a lot of work from his team for the one minute of effort that he did," Adam Blythe said in 'The Breakaway'. “That’s three hours of work done by his team, a lot of riders in the red. We saw Marc Soler, he was done at the end of it. We have two huge days coming up, massive days, and they have done all that work for a minute of effort and four seconds’ advantage. It’s not a lot of advantage in the grand scheme of things and with what’s to come."
The team tried to chase down a huge breakaway group and try to go for the stage win with Tadej Pogacar. A plan that would likely succeed if Michal Kwiatkowski and Maxim van Gils hadn't survived the surge from the peloton, however in the final 500 meters of the stage Pogacar attacked and gained four seconds both on road and bonus seconds on the Dane, cutting the gap down to a mere nine seconds.
“I think Jumbo-Visma will sit back at the end of today and think ‘that pretty much went to plan. They knew the climb suited Pogacar better, they knew what happened in 2020 when Pogacar won there in front of Roglic," Robbie McEwen believes. “They have put in a massive workload, okay he got eight seconds with the bonus, but to take an extra four. All that work for that? It is very reminiscent of last year, grabbing seconds and Vingegaard just went ‘bang, here’s the hammer.’”
The 'hammer' has been delivered by Vingegaard in the Col de Marie Blanque on stage 5, the only day Vingegaard has won time on Pogacar, but enough to win more than time than Pogacar has on the road and bonus seconds on stages 1, 2, 6, 9 and 13. The two are in almost complete balance, but miles ahead of the rest of the competition. This could be a crucial weekend now as the riders enter the deep Alps and find four more consecutive days where time gaps are expected.
“If you are going to go for the stage win, which it appears they did as they would not have rode that hard otherwise, you have got to make sure the group is smaller," Dan Lloyd added. "Letting a 20-man break to go up the road and then use three of your guys to try and control it, it was always going to be incredibly hard and they could not catch them all before the finish.”
Pogačar attacks to take precious seconds on the Grand Colombier. #TDF2023 💬 @TamauPogi : “In the end the day was successful for us as well and we took a bunch of seconds, so it was a good stage with a brilliant team performance.” 📝> uaeteamemirates.com/pogacar-attack… #WeAreUAE
