The words of Pogacar, Evenepoel, and Visma’s sports director after today’s stage

It was without a doubt the most sensational stage of this Tour de France, with the first real summit finish that may have already sealed the race. Pogacar’s dominance is the headline of the day, but there are many other talking points, such as Evenepoel’s collapse and recovery, and Vingegaard’s unconvincing performance, even being challenged by Lipowitz.

Here are the words of today’s key figures after the stage. Vingegaard didn’t speak to the press, so we have comments from his DS given to WielerFlits:

POGACAR – “I knew it was a beautiful climb, I’ve always known that. And when I did my first recon here, I understood why. In 2022 it went badly, I was trying to take back the yellow jersey but Jumbo was way too strong back then. Then I forgot about Hautacam. And now we’ve come to this Tour, and everyone around me started saying it was time for revenge. As we approached the climb, I thought this was the reverse of three years ago – even a Belgian rider was up front again. Back then it was van Aert, this time Wellens. You never know how your body will react, but it wasn’t too bad. I feel a bit of pain in my hip, but if I do normal pedaling and not anything too acrobatic, it’s not a problem. I’m happy to have gained so much time. We were really strong today, the team did an amazing job. Hats off to Healy too, for how he defended the yellow jersey.
This win is for Samuele Privitera and his family. It was the first thing I read this morning, and I was thinking of him in the final kilometers – how hard this sport is, and how much pain it can cause.”

EVENEPOEL – “It definitely wasn’t my best day. It was a tough mental battle with myself, but I didn’t give up and I always kept the bigger picture in mind. Giving up would’ve been the easy way, but I didn’t do that. I lost a lot of time to Tadej, but in the end ‘only’ one minute and twenty seconds to Jonas, so I limited the damage quite well. If this was my worst day, then that’s good news. Tomorrow it’ll be important not to get too stressed with the heat and the altitude, and I hope I can go faster than today. The final kilometers, in particular, will be full gas. I still don’t know whether I’ll use a time trial bike or a road bike. We’ll decide tonight.”

GRISCHA NIEMANN, VISMA DS – “Jonas was feeling good, but I think he lost his head a bit on the final climb. I told him to do it his way, to come up with a plan, and he did. He still finished second. But Pogacar was clearly way too strong, and we didn’t expect that. We didn’t expect to lose two minutes today, but that’s what happened and we have to deal with it. We tried to push, but it didn’t work out too well because Matteo wasn’t feeling good. Then we slowed the pace. We still stuck to the plan of attacking with Jonas on the final climb, it’s just that Pogacar was clearly on another level. We couldn’t have done more. Tomorrow we have an uphill time trial, and then we’ll see what to do. Right now, we’re significantly behind. We have to be honest about that. But there’s still a long way to go. We’ll definitely remain competitive. But at the moment, the strongest rider is wearing yellow.”

Dai un’occhiata alle altre notizie uscite qui su Universo Sportivo e rimanete aggiornati sui social con Universo Calcistico.