Is there such a thing as winning too much in sports? That’s what much of the discussion surrounding Tadej Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates-XRG has come to in cycling, especially after his latest complete destruction of the Tour de France opposition on stage 6 to Gavarnie-Gèdre.
On the surface, it might’ve seemed as though Pogačar and his UAE teammates were on an all-out mission to win the first mountain stage, but the earliest move on Thursday among the big players came from Visma-Lease a Bike, key rival Jonas Vingegaard’s team.
It was Victor Campenaerts trying to get up the road in the early break, and this quickly failed as UAE, and also yellow jersey holders Uno-X Mobility, paced in the group behind. Visma tried again with Matteo Jorgenson looking to get into a move.
Not far behind, though, was Pogačar himself moving up in the wheels and ensuring the racing stayed together, with lieutenant Isaac del Toro and rivals Vingegaard and Paul Seixas right alongside him.
There wasn’t much to read into, given the 133 kilometres remaining, but the intent was as clear as it was on stage 3 when UAE chased the break down to Les Angles. Pogačar wanted his riders to hunt down the stage victory, a truly ominous sign for everyone else.
One by one, as lone breakaway rider Ben O’Connor (Jayco-AlUla) was eventually pulled back, UAE took full control with Nils Politt being followed by Tim Wellens, Felix Großschartner, Adam Yates and then Isaac del Toro, setting an infernal tempo on the front to drop Vingegaard, and the rest, like flies on the Tourmalet.
Many will be saying the Tour is over after today, given the Slovenian scorched away to a massive lead of 2:42 on GC over nearest rival Vingegaard and everyone else is more than three minutes in arrears already after just one singular mountain stage.
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At the finish the atmosphere was somewhat bizarre for a Tour mountain stage with the typical furore, which was present on the Col d’Aspin and Col du Tourmalet along stage 6’s route, replaced instead by an eerily quiet atmosphere. Great French hope Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM) had done well to finish with the other now-podium contenders, but he too had been blown out of the water.
Across his four yellow jersey wins already Pogačar has often looked invincible, ending the race early on several occasions just as he looks to have done on stage 6, but this edition was billed as his hardest challenge since he last lost the race in 2023. A full-strength Vingegaard after an issue-free season and Giro d’Italia win, a super talent in Seixas presenting a new challenge, and podium-finishing duo Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz made this one of the most stacked GC start lists in years. But on one 17km climb, those would-be challengers were all put to the sword and came out second best.
Pogačar has long been a popular rider, well-liked for his personality but also his willingness to attack at any and every moment, but is his absolute destruction of almost the entire calendar growing tiresome for fans? It likely hasn’t reached that point yet but after he moved one win closer to Mark Cavendish’s 35 stage wins record, now on 23, how much longer can that last?
‘Would you give away stages?’
In reality, though, neither Pogačar nor UAE Team Emirates-XRG will likely care. He’s made it obvious that restraint when he knows he can win a stage is not his strongest suit and anything Pogačar wants, he tends to get.
There are no gifts in this sport, despite what he did for Del Toro on stage 2 when he actually seemed to take more joy from his young Mexican protégé taking victory atop Montjuïc. Typically Pogačar has no interest in sharing out the wins and letting days go to the break and, as teammate Adam Yates points out, why should he?
“I mean, if you can win at the Tour de France, you win; there’s not one person in this peloton that would be any different,” Yates told reporters at the finish in Gavarnie-Gèdre.
“So we try; it’s not guaranteed to win, you know, so I think you take every chance you get. Would you give away stages?” he asked the scrum of journalists in front of him. “Would you? I wouldn’t either.
“I know how hard it is to win, and I’ve only won one time at the Tour. I think if you do win in the Tour, it can make your career, so we try when we can and sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn’t.”
Pogačar should relent in the coming days at the Tour, though, not because he is allowing the rest of the peloton to enjoy some share of the spoils but because the end of the first week is heading for two sprint stages in Bordeaux and Bergerac.
Bad days at the Tour for Pogačar seemed more of a possibility in 2022 and 2023, on the Col du Granon, Hautacam and Col de la Loze, for example, which is another reason for making hay while the sun shines on his rainbow/yellow jerseys, so to speak. Still, that possibility has seemed much less likely since he reached fresh heights with new coach Javier Sola in 2024; bad days are rarer and rarer for the top rider of his generation.
“It’s a big gap, but as somebody said, then it’s never over until it’s over,” said Yates, acknowledging how, in theory, the Slovenian could come unstuck at any given moment. “You can have bad days – I think we just need to try not to make any mistakes and be calm, and that’s it.”
Pogačar being back in yellow with such a big gap already will mean he has to shoulder the extra hour-and-a-half of podium and media duties that ceding the jersey to Torstein Træen (Uno-X Moblity) on stage 4 allowed him to skip. Now he will likely have to do it for the next 15 stages but, as Yates said, this is far from alien to the four-time winner and serial winner.
“He’s in yellow, is he? Oh good. I think for him, he said on the bus the other day, he doesn’t know any different; he’s always in white or yellow or polka-dots or something,” said Yates.
“So he doesn’t know the other side of the Tour de France, where you get to go on the bus, have a shower, all this, so it sort of shows his mental resilience. We’ll see in the next few days, hopefully we can recover the next two days in sprints.”
Pogačar can win at will even at the Tour, where most riders dream their whole careers of tasting one morsel of victory, and he’s showing no signs of stopping. Cavendish’s record may seem far away, even for him given 13 more victories are required, but upon listening to Yates’ words, it’s clear none of that outside criticism or this notion of ‘winning too much’ is reaching Pogaćar. Nor would it be stopping his pursuit of complete domination if it did – winning is in his DNA.
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