As new Tour de France GC leader Torstein Træen is already finding out, being the wearer of the yellow jersey in the Tour de France is at once the most privileged and the most onerous job in cycling. But when your name is Tadej Pogačar that pressure is doubled.
No wonder he seemed perfectly happy to have handed it over on stage four. He’ll pass the next few days, maybe more, in comparative anonymity – or as close to that as Tadej Pogačar wearing the rainbow bands can ever come in the Tour de France – while Træen fields the various podium and press conference duties required of the yellow jersey.
Also ahead of Pogačar are Sean Quinn (EF Education-EasyPost) and Mathias Vacek (Lidl-Trek), who are at 28sec and 3:50 to Træn, while Pogačar is languishing at full 7:53 in arrears. The stage, from Carcassonne to Foix, was won by Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek).
That isn’t to say the maillot jaune will be forgotten about by Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates-XRG, far from it. Following stage four, he spoke to journalists as he warmed-down on a trainer in the still-broiling shade behind the UAE bus in Foix.
“I mean, obviously the goal is to take back the yellow jersey,” he said. “But yeah, you never know. They are really good, and it’s quite a big gap, so we will see. Now we will fight, but yeah, I think they can keep the yellow jersey for a long time.”
With the mercury soaring to 39deg C (102F) along the course, according to Cycling Weekly‘s overworked car, cooling protocols in the peloton were at the forefront of every team’s strategies. Race regulations were also amended to allow more water bottles to be handed up at feed zones.
Pogačar was affected just as much as anyone else, saying: “When we started, I had a full headache, and I was thinking this is gonna be one long day,” he said. “But then we kept showering each other with the water, and all was good.”
Exactly how much performance benefit there was in being able to skip duties such as press conferences and podium duties was hard to measure, Pogačar said, adding: “But some days there is probably a lot of stress with media, and some days it’s easy to do. It just depends on the day, and it’s hard to tell.
“Today will be one-and-a-half hours less obligations, so it definitely helps with recovery,” he added. “But I think now I’m pretty used to doing all the podium stuff, and we’ve got good protocol, and I have good help around me, good people that help me to stay cool and calm, and yeah, to recover as best as possible, even when we have to do the podium.”
Pogačar also had a word of praise for the Lidl-Trek team, saying that if a team of their calibre went in the breakaway, then it would likely succeed.
They did a “super-good job”, he said, but praised the efforts of his own team too. “We kept it cool, calm, and we arrived at the finish, I think, not spending a crazy amount of energy, obviously. I think Nils [Politt], Florian [Vermeersch] and Tim [Wellens] were super good today, dividing the work,” he said.
The next week or so looks like friendly territory for a rider looking to hang on to yellow for a while. Assuming Træen survives the big mountains of stage six, which crosses the cols d’Aspin and Tourmalet, with an uphill finish at Gavarnie-Gèdre, and the hard and mountainous stage 10 to Le Lorian, he could certainly keep it till stage 14 – a 10-day tenure. That’s when the big mountains of the final week kick in, starting with a finish at Le Markstein.
And at the end of that, Træen may well feel more than happy to hand back those media and podium duties – perhaps to Pogačar, but not necessarily – and with it the yellow jersey.
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