photo credits @ Le Tour
Tadej Pogačar conquered the slopes of Isola 2000 to win stage 19 of the Tour de France today, extending his overall lead to more than five minutes in the general classification.
The Slovenian simply rode away from his rivals with ease, before going on to swallow up the remnants of the day’s breakaway – including Matteo Jorgenson, Simon Yates and Richard Carapaz – on the way to taking his fourth stage win of the race.
Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel briefly tried to follow Pogačar’s acceleration when he pushed on from the group of favorites, but his attack largely went unanswered before he rode away in pursuit of Jorgenson at the head of the race.
Race Highlights
An early breakaway group of 22 riders formed, with Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) the first of them to reach the line at the intermediate sprint in Guillestre. Coquard was amongst the riders who then fell back as the lead group was decimated on the first climb of the day to Col de Vars.
A smaller lead group forms
Carapaz and Yates left the peloton on the climb and made it to the front group to join Matteo Jorgenson, Wilco Kelderman (Visma-Lease a Bike), Nicolas Prudhomme (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale), Ilan Van Wilder (Soudal-Quick Step), Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Cristian Rodriguez (Arkea-B&B Hotels) and Oscar Onley (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL) on the grueling ascent. Olympic champion and Stage 17 winner Carapaz topped the Col de Vars first, ahead of Jorgenson, Kelderman and Van Wilder, with the peloton by that point 3’30” behind.
Tough Cime de la Bonette climb
As the breakaway riders began the brutal ascent of the Cime de la Bonette their lead over the bunch had grown to 4’30”. Onley, Prudhomme and Van Wilder were dropped on the climb, with Carapaz again reaching the summit first to take 40 Mountain classification points and put him in the polka dot jersey, with the main GC group getting there 3’40” later.
Isola 2000 showdown
Cristian Rodriguez was dropped by the five remaining breakaway riders – Jorgenson, Keldermann, S. Yates, Hindley and Carapaz – early on the final climb to Isola 2000. Then 13.5km from the summit Hindley also lost ground and a few metres later Jorgenson attacked, going solo at the front. But 9.5km from the summit Pogačar also attacked, with Evenepoel and Vingegaard trying to follow him and unable to hold his wheel.
Within 2km the Yellow Jersey quickly built up a 20” advantage over his two rivals on the provisional podium. 1.9km from the summit Pogačar caught and overtook Jorgenson for another fantastic victory, cruising to the finish unrivaled.
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