Vingegaard is exactly as close to winning this Tour as the man wearing yellow. The panic button everyone’s reaching for isn’t wired to anything.
Jonas Vingegaard lost the yellow jersey on Monday (which he admits is a shame), but if the coverage is anything to go by, you’d think he lost the Tour de France with it.
I was worried about Vingegaard yesterday, but today he really stepped up. Initially I thought he exploded when he started looking behind, but he found an extra gear. Vingegaard was clearly second best today, and Pogacar did an all out effort, while only taking 2 seconds. That is much better than yesterday's performance.
Remco Evenepoel shows weekness again. You never know where you have him. Letting the wheel go that early could indicate, that he still has some problems in the high mountains. However we never know with this guy, but his problems in the high mountains has been ongoing since his 3rd place in 2024
Ben Healy dropped early today, in spite of the stage fitting him very well. It seems like he has not found his form this tour.
Ben O'connor has a lot of difficulty finding his form. When he finds his form, he can really be very good, like in the Vuelta 2024. But the tour is a hurdle he can't get over, since his 4th place in the 2021 Tour, he has struggled to reach the same level of success.
Alex Baudin is super strong. I was very surprised by his ride in Auvergne, but he continues to show, that he is one of the best in the peloton. Doing most of the work in the breakaway and then going solo with a hunting UAE was nice to see. He might keep the Maillot à Pois Rouges for the next couple of days, if he can get in the breakaway tomorrow.
Kevin Vauquelin was disappointing. I did not expect him to drop that early. He does have major problems in the mountains, but he could have done better today.
Armirail's crash could be a big problem for Visma. He can be so good at keeping on the pressure in vital moments, that Visma has to make changes to their strategy if he is not feeling well.
Great stage today, maybe I criticized Vingeggard to much yesterday
Choice moments from SBS stage 3 commentary:
“Look at you Gerro, rolling your eyeballs like a man that never crashed during his yay-look-at-me celebration”
“They say never meet your heroes… but some you want to meet, because they’re such good people! It’s not like meeting Bono”
“Is that the local Dungeons and Dragons contingent, made their way out of a basement?”
Update: “Simon’s shoes are so white, you just want to go stamp on them”
Tadej is the best rider in the sport. Possibly the best rider ever. He can dominate the classics, time trials, grand tours, and one-week races. He can win in a group sprint or win from an 80k solo escape. He can put in a hellacious 10 second effort and 60 minute effort.
Despite all of that, Jonas has carved out a really impressive palmarès of his own. He has become a really well-rounded rider. He can win mountain stages, time trials, and can now beat everyone in the world except one rider on GC-contested punchy grand tour stages.
I can appreciate Tadej while also getting frustrated by his dominance from a pure race entertainment perspective.
But it's a bit crazy for people to say stuff like Jonas isn't even trying for not launching attack after attack on a punchy stage 3 of a three week tour. He has a very narrow path to winning this tour (e.g. how he won in 2022/23), and it's not by putting himself into the red after three days.
Sébastien Piquet asks the stupidest post-stage questions and he clearly pissed off Tadej twice today. He always does these stupid ego questions, like “was today revenge for [whatever stage that person lost]?” Or today “you like the glory, don’t you?” and “you are always hungry?” Wtf my dude? No one cares about this shit. He’s looking for stupid headline snippets, and it’s just obviously so annoying for the riders. Surprised the riders haven’t insisted that the Tour get someone new to do those interviews.
The Channel 5 highlight package in the UK is not great. Where are her feet?
This guy has to go. He works for EF and sows their propaganda, which already is a questionable conflict of interest. He holds a clear anti-Pog/UAE bias ever since Tadej smoked him on Mt. Baldy in 2019. And worst of all, he is just a bad commentator. Please NBC, there are much better commentators out there. Bring back Horner!
As the title suggests, this is a fun and open question to hear some of more wacky and original ideas you can come up with (hopefully to inspire ASO and the UCI)! I've been thinking about what could be interesting to try and I've come up with a few ideas:
A secret/unknown distance stage where the finish line will be announced during the stage with 5km to go (I thought this could inspire breakaways and attacking, but it may also just force teams to control the break for the whole day)
A relay stage where the whole route has to be ridden by the whole team, but only one rider can be on the course at a time, so each team decides who rides in which order, how long each section is, and where they change
A TTT, but each team leader has to ride in a randomly allocated team. It's then up to those teams to decide if they'll sandbag their rivals, or make a truce so that they don't receive the same treatment
As I said, just a bit of fun, but feel free to share some ideas of your own!
They really want to paint Tarej as a crazy person like Jordan or Lance. During the post interview when the interviewer goes “you love the glory don’t you” Tadej looked visibly upset and said he wanted to go to the rollers.
Why can’t journalism lean into the actual state and emotion of the individual rider?
Source: magipons on Twitter
Not much to add here, but I'm just loving the energy Pogi and UAE are bringing this year. I'm diehard team Jonas, but I just love the playfulness they're bringing to these hot, difficult stages.
Picking up IDT. Joking about being hungry. Throwing the bear to Florian.
They're keeping it light and fun and I'm loving it.
What a start. I’ve been chomping at the bit to get my paints out again. I’ll be doing every stage but some days will be doubled up or on catch up as I’m running an art show and teaching through the event. Remember if you have a special request just send me a message. I take commissions too
Stage 4 take the riders on a hilly 181.9km journey from Carcassonne to Foix. After the first mountain finish in the Pyrenees, with Pogacar claiming the stage ahead of Vingegaard, this route is slightly easier. However, with around 2800m of climbing it will still be a demanding day. The final categorized climb comes more than 35 km from the finish, making this a stage that looks better for a strong breakaway rather than a showdown between the GC favorites.
The riders leave the medieval city of Carcassonne and head through the foothills of the Pyrenees before reaching the two main climbs of the day. First comes the Col de Coudons, a steady 10.5km climb at 5.5%, before the shorter but steeper Col de Montségur, 6.9km at 6.6%, which offers the last real chance to make a difference. From the summit, a long descent and rolling roads lead into Foix, where the fast finale should suit riders who can get over the final climb with a small gap.
With the sprinters expected to lose contact on the climbs and the GC teams unlikely to control the race, the battle to get into the breakaway should be fierce. If the right group gets away early, they have a very good chance of staying clear all the way to the finish.
Favorites:
| +++ | Romain Gregoire, Maxim Van Gils, Mathieu van der Poel
| ++ | Michael Matthews, Mads Pedersen, Mathias Vacek
| + | Magnus Cort, Jonas Abrahamsen
Pogacar collected his first of the tour, tomorrow the day for a breakaway?
While everyone was on their limit, Pogi was easily looking back and shouting to Del Toro to go, go. If he wanted to, he could’ve clearly gotten the stage win, some seconds, and also the yellow jersey. He looked awesome.
But it is not everything. The Tour is not decided on the short hills but on the long mountains. Also, Remco looked so much better than Lipowitz, who was almost dropping on the last climb, but in the long mountains, it can be totally different. So I wouldn't jump to any conclusions from that.
A rider who is riding for the GC risks one thing, and that is, that despite being in top form and above most of the peloton, you won’t win a stage. But Del Toro won his stage. And now this goal is done, and full focus can be on GC and helping Tadej.
And one more thing to that. Despite people speaking how he should leave the team to Ineos or I don’t know too, and Beppe Conti adding to the rumours about how three teams are seriously interested in him, I feel like he is in the most perfect place he can be.
Next to the best rider in the world, in the best team in the world. And it is not like that he doesn’t get his moment to shine there, that he won’t get to ride for his own GC too, that he doesn’t get the Tour nomination or whatever. He is in the best place possible.
I wouldn’t take anything from it. Despite many predictors putting him as one of the favourites for the stage, I always saw this as too hard for him. Even some GC riders were struggling. So I don’t think that matters in the bigger picture that much, and I am sure he is still in good shape.
Yesterday, Alex Molenaar took the polka dot jersey for Caja Rujal, and this exactly showed why the organizers decided to invite them instead of Rockets.
Because yes, the Rockets would attack too sometimes, but definitely not that often. But the organizers simply wanted an attacking team instead of a team around a sprinter. And in pure sprint stages, it will be seen too.
I will close my analysis with one interesting thought from Mads Pedersen. One journalist asked him if he missed sprint stages at the beginning of the Tour, and he replied that this Tour start was the least stressful he had ever experienced.
So, should the sprint stages be placed at the beginning of Grand Tours? I would say yes, but really just sometimes. I would, and it looks like riders would rather see them being put in the middle of the Grand Tour than at the beginning.
I am a little bit late today, but hopefully you will still like the reading.
📷: pipecano_photo
Battle of the Uncs Heats Up!
After a grueling day, and hopping in the breakaway George Bennett gets rewarded as he takes the Grey Jersey from Ion Izagirre. That's now 3 grey jersey changes in 3 stages of racing!
Wellens S1, Izagirre S2, Bennett S3.
*Per the suggestion from a member of the Council of Unc Enjoyers there are 3 new riders based on the fact they turn 35 this year (still qualify under UCI rules using Youth Jersey Logic). I also didn't include Gradek in the prior iteration I must have missed him.
Dear bike,
Please watch the Tour carefully.
I’d appreciate it if you rode like that this weekend.
Kind regards,
Your rider 😂
As forest fires once again engulf hectares of Spain and France, destroying livelihoods and ecosystems, spectators have been banned from the third stage of the Tour de France cycling race through the Pyrenees, which will be adapted as a forest fire burns the area.
It feels particularly dystopian that teams are sponsored by some of Europe's biggest climate criminals, Total Energies and Ineos.
TotalEnergies is one of the top 20 historical emitters of planet-warming greenhouse gases. Its annual carbon footprint has been estimated to be higher than that of the entire country of France. Meanwhile, Ineos is an oil, gas and petrochemicals conglomerate, headquartered in London. It is one of the world’s largest petrochemicals companies.
Fossil fuel companies - who are profiteering from the energy crisis - should be made to pay for heatwave costs, not benefitting from marketing opportunities.
Why is UAE at the front of the peloton? Surely it's Jumbo Visma's job to defend the Yellow? Why isn't Tadej saving his team's legs for the big stages?
Great fair play from Visma.
