Tadej Pogacar wins Tour de France stage 14 to extend overall lead

Tadej Pogacar, riding for the UAE Emirates team, increased his overall lead in the 2024 Tour de France, with a dominant victory over Jonas Vingegaard in the first summit finish of the race, at Pla d’Adet ski station in the Hautes-Pyrenées.

Pogacar, winner of the Tour in 2020 and 2021, accelerated violently from the main favourites just under 5km from the high-altitude finish to extend his lead on the Danish defending champion, leader of the Visma Lease-a-bike team, by almost two minutes.

A five-man breakaway approached the foot of the final ascent, with a lead of just under a minute and a half on the group of favourites, but quickly fell apart on the first steep ramps of the 10.6km climb. As Ben Healy, of EF Education EasyPost, moved clear, his final remaining companion, David Gaudu, of Groupama-FDJ, slid back into the peloton.

Behind Healy, Pogacar’s UAE Emirates team led the main peloton to the bottom of the ascent, with Remco Evenepoel and his Soudal Quick-Step team in their slipstream. But with none of the “Key Three” of Pogacar, Vingegaard or Evenepoel willing, or able, to risk an attack until the final kilometres, a tactical stalemate settled on the main contenders, until Pogacar’s teammate Adam Yates soloed clear, 7km from the finish.

The British rider’s move failed to draw a response from Vingegaard or his team, but was merely a decoy to an extraordinarily violent acceleration from his Slovenian team leader, as he rode into the final 5km. Pogacar quickly opened a gap and distanced Vingegaard and Evenepoel further, despite their best efforts, with the Belgian slipping to third in the overall rankings.

Meanwhile Ineos Grenadiers continued to suffer, losing Tom Pidcock to Covid symptoms, while an increasingly weary Geraint Thomas, winner of the Tour in 2018, battled on through the Pyrenees, in support of their team leader, Carlos Rodríguez.

With more riders dropping out, either through illness, injury or Covid, the peloton is steadily reducing in number. After Pogacar was hit by the withdrawal of a key support rider, Juan Ayuso on stage 13, Evenepoel lost his Soudal Quick-Step teammate Louis Vervaeke to Covid on the climb of the Col du Tourmalet.