More history for Tadej Pogacar as Slovenian emulates late great Gino Bartali with 5th mountain stage win in the same Tour de France on stage 20

The final mountain stage of the 2024 Tour de France both Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard were front and centre yet again. In the end, Pogacar was the man on top yet again, emulating the late great Gino Bartali with a fifth mountain top victory in the same Tour de France.

In the fierce French summer heat, the racing was immediately heating up on the first climb of the day, with seemingly all those riders in the lower rungs of the GC top-10 attempting to improve their standing with a long range raid. Derek Gee, Matteo Jorgenson, Giulio Ciccone and even Adam Yates all attempted to get themselves into early moves among others.

One of those with GC ambitions not doing nearly as well however, was Carlos Rodriguez. The INEOS Grenadiers leader, who started the day 6th overall was already in trouble on the first climb of the day, dropped by the Maillot Jaune group that contained many of those with hopes of overtaking him.

At the top of the first climb, a trio of Bruno Armirail, Enric Mas and Wilco Kelderman managed to get themselves up the road. On the subsequent descent and the second climb of the day, the likes of polka-dot jersey Richard Carapaz, Romain Bardet, Marc Soler and Jan Tratnik linked up with a second chase group caught somewhere in between the leaders and the peloton. Just before the summit, the strongest three of that chase group, Jasper Stuyven, Kevin Geniets and Tobias Johannessen joined the leaders.

Whilst the had managed to build up their advantage to up over five minutes at one point, Remco Evenepoel sent his Soudal - Quick-Step teammates to the front of the bunch, with Gianni Moscon setting a fierce pace and cutting the gap to just 3:53 with 50km to go. With just over 40km to go, around 4km left of the penultimate climb, the attacks in the breakaway began. First from Jan Tratnik, with the Team Visma | Lease a Bike rider soon joined by Richard Carapaz and Enric Mas. After it all came back together once again, the next man to make a move was Marc Soler, but again he couldn't snap the elastic. With Carapaz taking maximum points on the climb, his victory in the King of the Mountains classification was confirmed as long as he finishes the race.

At the foot of the final climb, the 10-man lead group's advantage over the peloton was 2:57 over the GC group, meaning the stage win was still very much in the balance. Proving strongest of the break on the final climb were Richard Carapaz and Enric Mas. At 10km to go, the duo still had over two minutes advantage on the GC group too. When Mikel Landa took over the pace setting for Evenepoel however, the group was almost instantly decimated with Santiago Buitrago, Giulio Ciccone, Adam Yates and Derek Gee all dropped by the Basque rider's pace setting, dropping the time gap to under two minutes in the process.

With 7km to go, Landa pulled over and Evenepoel made his move. Although, with Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar straight on the back wheel of the Belgian, it turned into more of a testing attack than anything. With things regrouping, Joao Almeida began to set the pace and the possibility of another Pogacar stage win was looming large, especially when at just under 6km to go, the difference between the Maillot Jaune and the leaders on the road dropped under a minute.

Then, almost simultaneously, Carapaz and Evenepoel attacked their respective groups. Both were unable to break though, and disappointingly for Evenepoel, a counter from Vingegaard actually dropped the Belgian. With 2.6km to go, Pogacar and Vingegaard caught Mas and Carapaz. Whilst Mas was quickly dropped, Carapaz bravely managed to hold the wheel into the final kilometre. As the final 500m were reached however, just two remained up front. Pogacar was stuck on the front, but the Maillot Jaune decided to lead from the front and comfortably triumphed again.