For a moment, just a moment, cycling enthusiasts will get a taste of the battle they have been looking forward to on Wednesday. At the end of the fourth stage of Paris-Nice, the climb to ski resort La Loge des Gardes (6.7 kilometers, 7.1 percent gradient) is on the program, with the finish at the top. That means that there is not only a stage victory to be picked up at the line, but also the yellow leader’s jersey.
The yellow-black team of Jumbo-Visma (JV) and the white-black team of UAE Team Emirates drive at a killer pace to the foot of the climb to drop off their leaders in the best position: the Dane Jonas Vingegaard (JV) and Slovenian Tadej Pogacar (UAE).
During the first few kilometers several riders try to escape, but no one succeeds. Until just over four kilometers from the line Vingegaard decides to attack; no one can follow him except Pogacar. The two let themselves be taken back briefly, but then the Slovenian takes off like a raging. This time Vingegaard has to leave a gap. Will the prestige battle between the best two cyclists in the world be decided here?
Dominant season start
This weekend is the climax of Paris-Nice, as the last two stages include several climbs in the course. This year’s multi-day race – also known as the ‘race to the sun’ – is all about the battle between the numbers one and two of the last two editions of the Tour de France. Since the 2022 Tour, which Vingegaard won, it is the first time that the two have raced against each other in a stage race. In the meantime, they only met in the Tour of Lombardy, where Pogacar won his third cycling monument and Vingegaard finished sixteenth.
In February, the first rumors were that Pogacar would not participate in Tirreno-Adriatico, the Italian stage race that also takes place this week and which he won in the past two years, but in Paris-Nice. Since then, the cycling world has been looking forward to the confrontation between the two best riders. Expectations only increased after both dominated in their first races of the year, in Spain: Vingegaard won three stages in Galicia and the general classification in O Gran Camiño, Pogacar did exactly the same in the Ruta del Sol in Andalusia.
Riders of the caliber Vingegaard and Pogacar show themselves less and less in competitions, which means that there are also fewer confrontations between them. Now that training, nutrition, equipment and other aspects of the sport are becoming more and more professional, riding races to get in shape is less and less necessary. Mathieu van der Poel, Wout van Aert, Julien Alaphilippe and many others also prefer altitude training camps. They have control over the circumstances themselves and do not have to be afraid of falls.
Jumbo-Visma was at the forefront of this. With the Slovenian Primoz Roglic, the Dutch team deliberately opted for fewer matches and more training years ago. Roglic was never able to win the Tour, but in recent years he has been regarded as one of the best riders with, among other things, three consecutive victories in the Tour of Spain, Olympic gold in the time trial and the win in Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
At the end of February, the opening weekend of this spring classic once again proved Jumbo-Visma to be right. Although sports director Arthur van Dongen stated in advance that “for specific races in which it goes up and down you usually need some race rhythm”, his riders won both the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad (Dylan van Baarle) directly from a training camp on the Teide in Tenerife. ) as Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne (Tiesj Benoot).
Vingegaard and Pogacar both spent 54 race days on their bikes last year. For both, that was less than in 2021, and it was almost half less than the number of race days (97) of the most active rider, the Belgian Thomas de Gendt. The times when riders raced for more than a hundred days in a year, as happened regularly in the first decade of this century, are definitely over.
Pogacar and his team UAE also make targeted choices. In 2021, the year that the Slovenian won the Tour de France for the second time, he decided for the first time not to ride one of the traditional preparation races, such as the Critérium du Dauphiné or the Tour of Switzerland. Pogacar then opted for a small round in his own country, took a rest and then explored a number of Tour stages. That decision paid off a few weeks later with the yellow jersey in Paris.
Tour start in Bilbao
In the coming weeks, Pogacar will be at the start of a number of spring classics. He wants to compete for the win in the monuments Milan-Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and he will also be seen again in the Dutch Amstel Gold Race for the first time since 2019. After that, Pogacar withdraws from the competition circuit and only rides the Tour of Slovenia.
He will only meet Vingegaard again after this week at the Tour start in the Spanish city of Bilbao. The Dane’s program only includes the Tour of the Basque Country and the Critérium du Dauphiné before he starts the Tour de France.
So for the enthusiasts it has to happen this week in Paris-Nice. “We will have to fight it out in the mountains,” Vingegaard said this week after the third stage, a team time trial won by Jumbo-Visma. “We’ll see who’s the strongest.”
On the final climb to La Loge des Gardes, the Dane seems to blow up on Wednesday. Several riders pass him in the final meters, Vingegaard has lost 43 seconds on the line. In the standings, he is 44 seconds behind leader Pogacar. Vingegaard will have to attack the upcoming mountain stages – a sight to behold.