"There wasn't really much we could do" - Visma domestiques on the hopelessness of trying to find Pogacar's weakspot

You cannot blame Visma | Lease a Bike for not trying. But despite their best efforts, Tadej Pogacar seems invincible and well on his way to win the fourth Tour de France in his career. Jonas Vingegaard once again tested the Slovenian on Col de la Madeleine with 80 kilometers to go, but with no effect. At the end of the day, Pogacar gained even more time on the Dane.

"First of all, we wanted the right setup in the breakaway and a good gap to be able to use someone later," Vingegaard's teammate Sepp Kuss revealed at the finish line a bit from team strategy heading into stage 18. "The start was super, super difficult on the Glandon. I was already thinking: let's see if I can finish."

However the American's tasks that day were on the slopes of Col de la Madeleine where he was to launch Vingegaard towards hopefully an epic GC raid. "On the Madeleine, we had planned to just set our own pace, then try to throw Jonas [Vingegaard] towards the top."

"It looked good, but Pogacar was right on his wheel," Kuss recalled the sparse information he received through radio broadcast. His race could've stopped when Vingegaard accelerated, but as the group came to a standstill in the valley to Col de la Loze, Kuss returned to the front of the race for one more shift, finding a completely new situation. "It seemed like there were a few attacks between the two climbs, in the flat part."

With third man overall Florian Lipowitz few minutes up the road, the cards have turned against Visma. "We didn't have an ideal situation with Lipowitz in front. So the pressure fell more on us than on UAE. Simon [Yates] did a great job, he almost climbed the whole climb. Then UAE took over, and at that point, there wasn't really much we could do to open up big gaps. But hey, it was a good stage."