DISCUSSION Criterium du Dauphiné Stage 4 | Is Tadej Pogacar out of shape? Can Remco Evenepoel win the Dauphiné?

The fourth stage of the Criterium du Dauphiné was an individual time trial, which always creates interesting gaps among the GC contenders, and this time was not an exception.

Featuring 17.4 kilometers with a short but hard climb in the middle of the route, the stage was propitious for Remco Evenepoel. And he didn’t disappoint, winning the time trial, which was the 1000th victory for Soudal Quick-Step (according to some sources, although it is disputed), while snatching the yellow jersey from Iván Romeo in the process.

His main rivals Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar couldn’t match his pace and lost 21 and 48 seconds respectively. The case of the Slovenian was particularly striking, as he showed visible discomfort throughout the stage and didn’t live up to the expectations, giving up almost a minute.

Vingegaard’s domestique Matteo Jorgenson also did an impressive ride, even outperforming Pogacar. Florian Lipowitz completed the top 5, standing just 5 seconds behind Evenepoel in the GC.

Once the stage finished, we asked some of our writers to share their thoughts and main takeaways about what happened today.

Well well well, now this stage was more clarifying towards the current level of the GC guys for the Tour. Remco's win was expected, but the gap towards Tadej Pogacar is worrying.

It looked like Tadej suffered a mechanical mid-race, and maybe didn't want to change bike afterwards, but he was already losing a lot of time beforehand, couldn't even finish ahead of Vingegaard and this gives me vibes of that 2023 time trial where he got beaten by the dane and on the next mountain stage he was dead (his own words).

The TT itself looks like it was only contested by GC guys and everyone else was just too far behind, also not very encouraging to the TT specialists that could be thinking about a stage win in the Tour. But then again, it is not yet confirmed whether or not Ganna / Tarling will be on the Tour, and it seems there's only 1 spot left on INEOS, and I don't see any other TT specialist who could take a win off our world champ Evenepoel.

The GC at the moment looks quite interesting and it puts the GC on quite an interesting order. Everyone is very close to each other, but the more offensive guys are comming from behind and will have to be the ones recovering the gap. Fun days ahead!

An interesting stage, first as we keep changing yellow jerseys everyday, but overall we've got interesting results. Psyched with Paul Seixas, an 18-year old lightweight climber finishing on the top 10, which is a terrific sign for the French in the next few years.

Obviously the big news is Pogacar's time loss... I won't lie I expected the 'big 3' to finish in that order today, but didn't think the gaps would be so big. It gives the race yet another spark, as, although unlikely, it really does feel like Evenepoel can win this race after the differences he made, and simultaneously Pogacar will actually have go on the offensive if he wants to win a title in a race he hasn't won to this day - but seemingly, both his rivals are on brilliant form.

Another great stage, just like the whole Critérium du Dauphiné! I had Remco as my top favourite, and the Belgian confirmed it with a brilliant performance. What I didn't expect was to see Tadej Pogacar lose 48 seconds (despite a small mechanical problem, which he solved himself). It was a less successful day for the world champion and there's no denying it.

The other corner of the triangle, Jonas Vingegaard, performed above my expectations and is clearly in good shape. This forces Pogacar to attack in the mountains, we're in for a spectacle in the last three days of competition and, above all, we don't know who's going to win the race.

I'd also like to highlight Matteo Jorgenson, who is clearly in contention for the final podium. Lipowitz and Dunbar defended themselves very well and are in contention for the top 10. Another big surprise for many may have been Paul Seixas, but this kid was already on my radar and this time trial only reinforces my pre-race bet that he'll finish in the top 10!

First reference for Matteo Jorgenson. What a performance. Then Paul Seixas... a kid to close out the top-10, he left me surprised and with my mouth watering for what's to come.

Remco Evenepoel being Remco Evenepoel. What a smashing machine on the time trial bike. Jonas Vingegaard did a good ITT, defended himself and is in a good position to take the lead in the general classification in the mountains.

Pogacar was not the loser of the day, but the disappointment of the day. It was perhaps the worst ITT I've seen the Slovenian cyclist do. Now everyone's saying that Pogacar will attack in the mountains, the race will get interesting. Yes, of course it will. But UAE doesn't have the strongest bloc around its leader, Jonas has already shown that he's physically well and Remco has been given a real morale boost after a whole spring of practically not competing.

Sometimes it's not enough to have the best legs. You also need to have high morale. And today Remco and Vingegaard came out on top against Pogacar. Let's go to the mountains to clear up any doubts.

I think the most notable thing has been Tadej Pogacar's underperformance. He hasn’t been up to the task, and if he rides like this in the time trials at the Tour de France, it’s going to be tough for him against Jonas Vingegaard. The Dane looked good, always smiling during this Dauphiné, and Remco did what was expected of him — which doesn’t always happen.

As for the rest, thinking about Movistar Team and their consistently dreadful performances in time trials, it’s no coincidence that two former riders from the Spanish squad — Matteo Jorgenson (3rd) and Remi Cavagna (6th) — delivered such strong results. Enric Mas was, as usual, a disaster.

Special mention goes to the (until now) leader Iván Romeo. After his brilliant ride yesterday, he seemed to feel the pressure today. I believe he has the quality to have held on to the yellow jersey — to have clawed back a few more seconds and stayed in the lead. He’s young, and I just hope being part of Movistar doesn’t end up hurting him in the time trials, which are clearly one of his strengths, as he showed in the last U23 World Championships.

The main story of the day is Tadej Pogacar. There are so many questions surrounding his performance, sadly he didn’t want to talk to the media after the stage in order to give some explanations. There were bad signs from the beginning, Pogacar didn’t look comfortable in the bike and he was even drinking water at some point – something very unusual for a 20-minute effort, besides of checking Vingegaard’s bike after finishing the time-trial.

The main conclusion that can be drawn is that the Colnago bike he uses for time-trials has some kind of flaws that hindered his performance. At some point during a fast downhill section right before the intermediate point, it was evident that he was struggling to maintain control of the bike, to the extent that he wasn’t far from crashing once.

That was not necessarily the only reason why he lost that much time to Evenepoel and Vingegaard, but it played an important role. From the positive side for him, at least this has not happened at the Tour de France, which would have been much more catastrophic, so UAE and Pogacar have enough time to fix that.

Race-wise, Pogacar’s underperformance was a perfect outcome from the spectators’ perspective. The main favourite has lost a chunk of time with his two main rivals and is now forced to be offensive. We already know that Pogacar does not need many incentives to attack, but now he has to do it.

And this is actually an uncommon situation, because we are not used to seeing Pogacar forced to do so. It is usually the other way around – Pogacar as the leader early and his rivals compelled to try something. The race is much more open, and there are three hard mountain stages ahead that already looked promising, now even more.

Remco Evenepoel didn’t disappoint and confirmed why he is the current time-trial Olympic and world champion. He is becoming almost unbeatable in this field, only Ganna or Tarling might be able to contest him in completely flat TTs. If there is some climb in the middle of the route like it was the case today, he is just the best. He has won 24 ITTs in his career out of 48 he has participated in…

He has the yellow jersey on his shoulders and that should also be a big boost of morale before the three decisive stages of the weekend. Still I don’t think he will be able to maintain it, but I would really love it if he proves me wrong.

Jonas Vingegaard did a great time-trial as well, pretty much what was expected from him. Losing to Evenepoel was almost certain, but beating Pogacar by almost half a minute was something few people would have expected, not even the most optimistic ones. Moral victory for Visma, but the race is far from over.

Outside of the big three, there are some riders that impressed me. Jorgenson and Lipowitz proved they are the best among humans, both having solid chances for a top 5, especially Lipowitz – he is the leader of his team unlike Jorgenson, who might have to sacrifice his own ambitions to help Vingegaard.

Van der Poel also did an impressive TT, he was better than every TT specialist. He has been outstanding at Dauphiné so far. Eddie Dunbar also did a hell of a ride, I would have never expected him to beat most of the specialists.

The rest of the GC guys were quite close to each other, performing as expected. The worst of them – excluding Max Poole, but he can be excused since he suffered a crash – was Enric Mas, losing more than 2 minutes to Evenepoel. Not a surprise anyways, at this point it doesn’t seem like he will ever improve…