Jonas Vingegaard stretches Tour de France lead on decisive day

The Austrian rider Felix Gall won stage 17 of the Tour de France, from Saint-Gervais Mont-Blanc to Courchevel, after the race leader Jonas Vingegaard increased his overall lead on Tadej Pogacar to seven minutes and 35 seconds with another display of power on the Tour’s highest ascent, the 2,304-metre climb of the Col de la Loze.

Gall, of the AG2R Citroën team, attacked alone at the foot of the steepest sections of the Loze and maintained his lead on chaser Simon Yates over the summit, through the narrow winding descent and on to the 18% gradients leading to the finish line on Courchevel altiport.

Pogacar finally relinquished any hopes of winning in Paris, 7.6 kilometres from the top of the Loze, as, legs heavy and racing jersey unzipped to the waist, he slipped behind the yellow jersey group, powered by Vingegaard’s Jumbo-Visma team, who had completely mastered the tactics of the Tour’s “Queen” stage.

“I’m gone, I’m dead,” Pogacar radioed to his team car, as what had been, only 48 hours earlier, a divide of a handful of seconds, suddenly became a yawning chasm of minutes between the double Tour winner and Vingegaard.

His collapse suddenly changed priorities for his UAE Emirates team, with Adam Yates immediately fighting to defend his third place overall, as his twin brother Simon, of the Jayco AlUla team, closed down on Gall to take second place on the stage.

A high-quality 34-rider breakaway, including Gall, had moved clear on the approach to the first category climb of the Cormet de Roselend and steadily drew clear of the main peloton, containing Vingegaard. The Dane, whose dominant win in the stage 16 time trial had been met with open scepticism in the French media, had no need to take any risks and, with Pogacar defeated, could ride conservatively through the closing kilometres.

Pogacar may have been further hampered by a seemingly innocuous crash soon after the start in Saint-Gervais Mont-Blanc, when he came down on his already wounded left knee and also cut his elbow. Bloodied but unhindered, the Slovenian continued, clinging onto the Jumbo-Visma pacemaking train until he finally conceded on the climb of the Loze. The duel is very much over but the polemics over Vingegaard’s domination of this Tour appear to just be beginning

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