The Tour de France is accustomed to Tadej Pogačar masterclasses. He’s been coming here for seven years now, and each and every year – even in 2022 and 2023 when he was beaten to the yellow jersey – he delivers an exhibition or six (as in 2024).
Almost all of his 23 stage wins have been greeted with a sense of inevitability – the best bike rider of all time just doing best bike rider of all time things – but his stage six win in the Pyrenees produced a different reaction to what has come before.
Just beyond the finish line stood soigneurs, managers and communications staff from all 23 competing teams, as well as a few dozen journalists and camera operators. Except for the winning team’s personnel, only in exceptional circumstances do those present audibly react to a race result. Still, there’s always chatter, always noise.
This time there was nothing. Silence. And a deafening one at that.
It’s only day six of a race that is meant to be backloaded to prevent Pogačar from running away with the yellow jersey, but on the first real mountain day that didn’t even finish up a steep climb he’s practically, avoiding any unforeseen circumstances, wrapped the race up, possessing a lead of 2:42 to Vingegaard. How on earth is the Dane, or anyone else, meant to reduce such a big deficit, let alone overturn it?
“Boring,” mouthed one soigneur from a team in the fight for the podium spots. Their colleague laughed, and nodded along.
Professional road cycling is living through an era that will be mythicised for decades to come, in the same way the Eddy Merckx epoch is now. Everyone tuning into the Tour de France is witnessing history in action. Roadside fans are watching the greatest of all time, riders are racing with the greatest of all time, and staff and media are in the vicinity of the greatest of all time. There is a great deal of privilege in all of that.
But in Gavarnie-Gèdre there was a collective sigh at Pogačar’s latest victory. Everyone had resigned themselves to the fact that he will almost certainly be the champion for a record-equalling fifth time come the end of the race. That is not the reason for the widespread disgruntlement – it’s the knowing that there’s likely to be no competition for the maillot jaune in this year’s Tour de France that has left everyone, save for the UAE cohort, exasperated and defeated.
All enthusiasm for the race – buoyed considerably by Paul Seixas’s much-anticipated debut – has dissipated in one afternoon. More accurately, in one attack, 5.5km from the top of the Col du Tourmalet.
Remco Evenepoel, part of Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe’s one-two approach with Florian Lipowitz, fumed when he crossed the line along with the rest of the podium hopefuls. He would have expected to be inferior to Pogačar on a day that counted 4,200m of elevation, but it was the enormity and manner of Pogačar’s dominance that seemingly enraged Evenepoel, along with his dissatisfaction with Lipowitz’s apparent lack of cooperation.
The Belgian collected his safety bib and whistle that he required to descend the mountain 22km back to his team bus, but not before expressing his irritation. He wasn’t alone in his frustration.
There are 15 more stages to win, classifications to top and a podium to fight over, but the feeling on the ground and within the peloton as the race heads away from the Pyrenees is one of resigned finality.
“Should we all go home?” one team communications officer said. They weren’t joking, either.
