Also on the 18th stage of the Tour de France, Jonas Vingegaard left nothing to be untrained. He attacked again several times, but again his adversary counter Tadej Pogacar casually. Nevertheless, he just doesn’t want to give up Dane.
The strongest driver of the 2025 France tour is Tadej Pogacar. The past few days and weeks left no doubt about that.
This is now continuing in the Alps. On the extremely hard mountains to Col del la Loze, his challenger Jonas Vingegaard blew twice to the attack, but could not shake off the Slovenes again. On the contrary. On the last few meters, Pogacar took the Visma captain a few seconds.
In the overall ranking, the tour dominator is at the top with a comfortable lead of 4:26 minutes on Vingegaard. The last Alpine showdown is waiting for the top drivers on Friday.
Vingegaard does not yet want to write off this year’s Tour de France.
“No, I think it looked like we were pretty much on the same way today. He won a few seconds today. The tour is not over yet,” said Vingegaard.
Tour de France: Vingegaard just doesn’t give up
“Not yet?” He was asked by a reporter. “Still not,” Vingegaard replied clearly.
The mountain stage was a “brutal day”, he said. “Five hours in the saddle, I’m not sure if I ever drove such a hard stage on the tour before,” said Vingegaard after the target.
“I felt good. The team felt good. We had big plans – that could be seen – to try to go early, and we did that,” continued the 28 -year -old.
“Unfortunately I couldn’t make up time on Tadej, but the team did a great job today. I would like to thank my teammates again today. Everyone was 100 percent behind the plan. It gives me so much motivation when I have had such a team behind me.”
At the foot of the final climb, an attack by Lipowitz had surprised the top drivers a little, they first let the Germans pull.
“We didn’t want to work together and then Lipowitz went up the street,” said Vingegaard. “We waited for our teammates and then put on the pace at the Col de la Loze.”