Tour de France: Pogacar dominates Vingegaard on stage 4 and takes the yellow flag | Tour de France 2024

Tadej Pogacar won the first mountain stage of the 2024 Tour de France, from Pinerolo to Valloire, after distancing defending champion Jonas Vingegaard at the top of the Col du Galibier.

“I wanted to hit hard today,” Pogacar said after his 12th Tour de France stage win. “That was the plan and we executed it very well.”

The two rivals clashed again in the mountains, but this time UAE Team Emirates leader Pogacar came out on top, climbing and descending faster than the Dane to take a 35-second lead on the high-speed descent to the finish line.

“I didn’t want to leave too early because of the wind,” Pogacar explained of his attack near the summit of Galibier, at 2,642 metres. “So I had to make all the difference in the last few hundred metres.”

On both the descents and the climbs, Pogacar simply has more power than his rivals and he extended his lead on the spiral descent to Valloire. “I know the descent, but I was a bit surprised to see the road wet in the first corners, it was a bit scary. But this descent is super fast and if you know the road as well, it helps.”

All the work that Vingegaard and his Visma Lease-a-bike team were able to do on his descent, during his forced break from racing from mid-April to the end of June, was not enough.

With the bonus seconds, Pogacar now leads the race in the general classification, ahead of Soudal Quick-Step’s Remco Evenepoel, 45 seconds ahead, and Vingegaard third overall, 50 seconds behind, after just four stages.

Vingegaard said: “It’s a shame to lose time, but to be honest, when we came to the Tour we expected to be behind after these first four stages. To only lose time on one of them, I think we can be pretty happy.”

“I lost most of the time today in the second part of the descent, where weight counts a bit more,” said the Dane. “Tadej has a bit more weight. That served him well and I have to accept that.”

Asked if he was already 1-0 down, Vingegaard replied: “Yes, but we expected to be 3-0 down, so I think it’s a small victory. We believe in our plan, so we’ll see at the end of the Tour.”

There is, however, a feeling that Evenepoel has already dethroned Vingegaard as the main challenger to double Tour winner Pogacar, although he admitted that following the Slovenian on the final climb was beyond his strength. “It was clear that I didn’t have the same speed in my legs as him,” said the Belgian.

Vingegaard, as it turned out, also flattered the disappointment by following Pogacar’s attack in the Bologna stage on Sunday. The Dane is still a few points away from his best, as is his Visma Lease-a-bike team, which, after winning all three Grand Tours in 2023, risks starting from scratch in 2024.

Even in the final sprint to the line in Valloire, Vingegaard looked tired, failing to close the gap to Evenepoel and losing a further two seconds.

Winner of the world time trial title in Scotland last year, Evenepoel is now preparing to contest the first time trial of the Tour next Friday. “It’s always positive to finish second behind the best rider in the world,” he said.

For Richard Carapaz, his first experience of racing in the yellow jersey turned sour in the final kilometres of the Galibier, where he lost ground for good. Carapaz, of EF Education Easy Post, finished more than five minutes behind Pogacar, his podium hopes gone after just 25km of racing.

It was a bitter disappointment for the Ecuadorian, but for most of the other riders, with the Slovenian in hot pursuit, things got worse. Vingegaard and his teammates, who don’t have the means to do so, must now ensure his Tour campaign doesn’t follow the same trajectory.