"They were getting a bit annoying with all the attacks, so I decided to put in a stronger effort myself" - Tadej Pogacar brushes off Visma's Tour de France pressure

Team Visma | Lease a Bike launched a targeted attack of Tadej Pogacar during stage 10 of the 2025 Tour de France, keeping the pressure high, sending riders up the road just generally being a nuisance at the front of the peloton. Rather than making Pogacar tired though, all they might have done is annoy the UAE Team Emirates - XRG leader.

After having marked out attacks from the likes of Sepp Kuss and Matteo Jorgenson, on the final climb of the day, Pogacar then attacked himself, leaving all of the Visma riders bar Jonas Vingegaard in the dust. Speaking to Slovenian national television after stage 10's finish, the three-time Maillot Jaune winner admitted he attacked more out of annoyance than anything else.

"They were getting a bit annoying with all the attacks, so I decided to put in a stronger effort myself," Pogacar detailed. “We also caught up with Lenny Martinez from the breakaway, and I made sure he crossed the line ahead of me – it means a lot more to him."

“They definitely tried to make something happen today, but I had good legs, and the climbs weren’t hard enough to create bigger gaps," he continued, following a similar thread as he had done when speaking to the English language media. "There’s still a lot to come.”

One thing that did happen on stage 10 though, was that Pogacar lost the Maillot Jaune, handing over the rest lead at the first rest day to EF Education-EasyPost's Ben Healy. "It's never easy to give up the yellow jersey, of course, but... Yesterday we lost João Almeida, and Pavel Sivakov is still recovering from illness. Our goal today was to keep Visma from launching attacks – or at least to neutralise them – and we executed that mission perfectly," he concludes. "In a way, it’s actually nice not to have the Yellow Jersey right now."