{"id":186331,"date":"2025-06-13T17:03:19","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T17:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/13\/pogacar-was-superior-again-remco-evenepoel-bows-to-near-inevitable-and-cedes-criterium-du-dauphine-lead-to-slovenian-star\/"},"modified":"2025-06-13T17:03:19","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T17:03:19","slug":"pogacar-was-superior-again-remco-evenepoel-bows-to-near-inevitable-and-cedes-criterium-du-dauphine-lead-to-slovenian-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/13\/pogacar-was-superior-again-remco-evenepoel-bows-to-near-inevitable-and-cedes-criterium-du-dauphine-lead-to-slovenian-star\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Poga\u010dar was superior again&#8217; &#8211; Remco Evenepoel bows to near-inevitable and cedes Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9 lead to Slovenian star"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>Barely 48 hours ago after he had decimated the field in the <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/criterium-du-dauphine\/\" data-before-rewrite-localise=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/criterium-du-dauphine\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9 <\/a>time trial, the tables turned dramatically for Remco Evenepoel as the <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/road\/teams\/uci-worldtour\/2024\/soudal-quickstep\/\" data-before-rewrite-localise=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/road\/teams\/uci-worldtour\/2024\/soudal-quickstep\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Soudal-QuickStep<\/a> star suffered badly on the final summit finish on stage 6 and lost the overall lead.<\/p>\n<p>Evenepoel was unable to respond to the attacks of <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/riders\/tadej-pogacar\/\" data-before-rewrite-localise=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/riders\/tadej-pogacar\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tadej Poga\u010dar<\/a> when the <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/races\/criterium-du-dauphine-2025\/stage-6\/results\/\" data-before-rewrite-localise=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/races\/criterium-du-dauphine-2025\/stage-6\/results\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Slovenian opened up the throttle at the foot of the C\u00f4te de Domancy<\/a>. Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) was briefly able to hold the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider&#8217;s back wheel, for the Belgian, the pace proved too tough almost as soon as Poga\u010dar attacked.<\/p>\n<aside data-block-type=\"embed\" data-render-type=\"fte\" data-skip=\"dealsy\" data-widget-type=\"seasonal\" class=\"hawk-base\"\/>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">Having adopted his usual steady pacing strategy on the climbs rather than risk over-reacting then losing control completely, by the summit, Evenepoel was nearly two minutes back on the stage winner and 50 seconds down on Vingegaard.<\/p>\n<aside data-component-name=\"Recirculation:ArticleRiver\" format=\"inline\" data-nosnippet=\"\">\n<span class=\"bg-secondary-500 text-white text-lg font-bold uppercase py-1 px-2 leading-[1.625rem] sm:leading-[6px] sm:text-sm\"><br \/>\nYou may like<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">That was not a total defeat, by any means, but it was enough of a loss to surely give the Belgian something a sense of deja vu from last year&#8217;s Tour. It was 11 months ago his damage control climbing policy in the Pyrenees and Alps helped ensure he could take a remarkable third place in his debut in cycling&#8217;s biggest race. But then as now, when the road steepened, the two top names remained out of his league.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">Evenepoel said before the start that his crash on Thursday&#8217;s sprint stage had not had any effect on his climbing, and when Visma-Lease a Bike blew the race apart on the second last ascent of the day, the C\u00f4te de Mont-Saxonnex, he continued to insist he felt good.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">However, his difficult ascent of the C\u00f4te de Domancy and C\u00f4te de Cry looked as if he was in anything but a good place, and Soudal-QuickStep&#8217;s notable lack of mountain support for the Belgian star on Friday likely did nothing to help him when he was isolated.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&#8220;I had felt great before,&#8221; he told <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/vtm.be\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" data-url=\"https:\/\/vtm.be\/\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer-when-downgrade\" data-hl-processed=\"none\"><em>VTM Nieuws<\/em>,<\/a> but &#8220;maybe I just hadn\u2019t recovered enough from the efforts on that penultimate climb. They also started that last climb as if the finish was after two kilometres.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div id=\"slice-container-newsletterForm-articleInbodyContent-3mguXUnXpRKkDNiMGBMETi\" class=\"slice-container newsletter-inbodyContent-slice newsletterForm-articleInbodyContent-3mguXUnXpRKkDNiMGBMETi slice-container-newsletterForm\">\n<div data-hydrate=\"true\" class=\"newsletter-form__wrapper newsletter-form__wrapper--inbodyContent\">\n<div class=\"newsletter-form__container\">\n<section class=\"newsletter-form__top-bar\"\/>\n<section class=\"newsletter-form__main-section\">\n<p class=\"newsletter-form__strapline\">The latest race content, interviews, features, reviews and expert buying guides, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">UAE&#8217;s blistering pace with Pavel Sivakov, Jhonatan Narv\u00e1ez and Tim Wellens was hardly easy to follow. But if Evenepoel was still trailing at the back of the Poga\u010dar group when the last of the Slovenian&#8217;s domestiques swung off, once Poga\u010dar himself began to start firing on all cylinders, it was another story altogether.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\u201cPogacar was superior again,\u201d Evenepoel said simply by way of explanation. \u201cHe showed once again that he is the best cyclist in the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&#8220;In the end, everyone exploded except for him, including Vingegaard.\u201d As he put it to <a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nieuwsblad.be\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.nieuwsblad.be\/\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer-when-downgrade\" data-hl-processed=\"none\"><em>Nieuwsblad<\/em><\/a>. &#8220;I think there was only one rider who deserved to win today.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"quieter-and-quieter-2\" class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&#8216;Quieter and quieter&#8217;<\/h2>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">Evenepoel said that he felt &#8220;quieter and quieter&#8221;, a slightly poetic way of saying he felt less and less certain of his strength, as the kilometres ticked down. But rather than point to any particular reason for his fading power, he said he was a little baffled as to the exact cause.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&#8220;Maybe it&#8217;s some after-effects of the fall. Or maybe I just don&#8217;t have a super feeling yet. Or it was just a bad day. That can happen too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">He was not overly troubled by his lack of teammates in the finale, he said, given that there were only seven riders together at the top of the hardest climb of the day, the Saxonnax.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&#8220;I had no one, but Poga\u010dar had only one teammate with him. Florian Lipowitz [Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe] and [Enric] Mas [Movistar] were also alone,&#8221; he pointed out to<a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nieuwsblad.be\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.nieuwsblad.be\/\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer-when-downgrade\" data-hl-processed=\"none\"> <em>Nieuwsblad<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&#8220;So everyone was in the same situation. Moreover, in our team we have some guys who are returning from injury and others are still building their form. I&#8217;m not too worried, we&#8217;ll just keep working.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">It remained to be seen what Evenepoel, now fourth overall at 1:22, can achieve on the weekend&#8217;s monster Alpine stages. While Friday&#8217;s ride was not his best for sure comebacks after mountain defeats are definitely an inhouse speciality for the Belgian, too as he showed in the 2023 Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a after his disastrous day on the Tourmalet.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\">Or as Evenepoel put it in his usual upbeat way, \u201cTomorrow [Saturday] will be a new day. Maybe I&#8217;ll have different legs, and we&#8217;ll be on a [climbing] finale that will be completely different, too.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><em><strong>Subscribe to Cyclingnews and gear up for the Tour de France with unlimited access to our coverage of the Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9 &#8211; including breaking news, analysis and more, reported by our journalists on the ground and across the globe. <\/strong><\/em><a data-analytics-id=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/sub24\/?utm_source=Referral+link&amp;utm_medium=Website&amp;utm_campaign=Daup25\" target=\"_blank\" data-before-rewrite-localise=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/sub24\/?utm_source=Referral+link&amp;utm_medium=Website&amp;utm_campaign=Daup25\" rel=\"noopener\"><em><strong>Find out more<\/strong><\/em><\/a><em><strong>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cyclingnews.com\/news\/pogacar-was-superior-again-remco-evenepoel-bows-to-near-inevitable-and-cedes-criterium-du-dauphine-lead-to-slovenian-star\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Barely 48 hours ago after he had decimated the field in the Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9 time trial, the tables turned dramatically for Remco Evenepoel as the Soudal-QuickStep star suffered badly on the final summit finish on stage 6 and lost the overall lead. Evenepoel was unable to respond to the attacks of Tadej Poga\u010dar when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":186332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6804],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-186331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}