To be fair to the second-best rider at this Tour, the omens were hardly promising when a touch of wheels sent him sprawling across the tarmac early on in Stage 17 just as the jostling for positions played out ahead of the first climb.
But once he went off the back of the yellow jersey group and the elastic snapped on the Col de la Loze, the writing was well and truly on the wall for Pogacar and his UAE team.
Smelling blood – and not just the blood still showing on his rival’s knee – Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) pushed on and picked off remnants of the day’s large breakaway one by one as he established an insurmountable seven-minute wedge between himself and his closest challenger at the top of the standings at the close of play. A gap which, lest we forget, stood at just 10 seconds entering the final week of the race.
The Danish defending champion has now all but won a second Tour de France crown – following up his emphatic time trial performance on Tuesday with the final nail in Pogacar’s push for a third Tour win during a clinical ride in Wednesday’s 166km raid through the Alps.
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'Nightmare' – Chaotic scenes as Vingegaard held up by stalled moto and car
Austria’s Felix Gall (AG2R-Citroen) was one of only three riders to hold off Vingegaard’s blitz, the Tour debutant romping to the biggest win of his career on the ramped finish on the altiport at Courchevel.
After striking out from a four-man leading group with 5km remaining of the final climb, Gall maintained his lead on the steep 24% sections near the summit of the Col de la Loze, before keeping his nerve on the fast, twisting descent to the ski resort below.
Gall crossed the line 34 seconds ahead of Britain’s Simon Yates (Jayco-AlUla), who rose three places into fifth in the new-look general classification. Spain’s Pello Bilbao (Bahrain Victorious) edged clear of Vingegaard on the final ramp to take third place and rise to sixth – but the day belonged to two men: Gall and Vingegaard.
On top of a stage win in his debut Tour, Gall moves up to eighth in the standings and is now just six points shy of Italy’s Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) in the king of the mountains standings.
“It’s incredible. I don’t know what to say. This whole year has been incredible. But to do so well in the Tour de France and to win the queen stage – it’s incredible,” an emotional Gall, 25, said at the finish.
As for Pogacar, the 24-year-old – who entered the Tour off the back of a wrist injury that laid him low since the spring – crossed the line in 22nd place almost eight minutes behind Gall, the wheels of what recently looked like a serious bid for glory in Paris having now well and truly fallen by the wayside. And some.
If the subtext of Wednesday’s stage surrounded the possibility of Pogacar mounting an unlikely comeback following his time trial disappointment, the yellow jersey battle took an early backseat to a series of skirmishes between polka dot protagonists Ciccone and Neilson Powless (EF Education-EasyPost).
With a touch of wheels bringing down Pogacar behind, both Ciccone and Powless battled into a 17-man move on the first of four climbs, the Col des Saisies. A high tempo, however, saw the American quickly dropped as his Italian rival zipped clear to pocket maximum points once the breakaway had been neutralised near the summit.
France’s Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal-QuickStep) attacked on descent with Ciccone and Latvia’s Krists Neilands (Israel-PremierTech), the trio caught by another 30-odd riders shortly after the intermediate sprint at Beaufort at the foot of the next Cat.1 test.
Ciccone once again took maximum points over the magnificent Cormet de Roselend on the nose of a stellar group that was soon larger than the chasing yellow jersey group around 1’30” behind. Vingegaard’s Jumbo-Visma had placed two riders in the move – Tiesj Benoot and Wilco Kelderman – following a dual attack by Marc Soler and Rafal Majka of UAE.
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Pello Bilbao, Simon Yates and Rafal Majka ride in the breakaway during Stage 17 of the Tour de France 2023
Image credit: Getty Images
Also in the breakaway were top 10 riders Simon Yates, Bilbao, David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ), Gall and Guillaume Martin (Cofidis), with another French favourite Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) in the mix, too.
Some hefty pacing from Danish champion Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) for team-mate Ciccone saw the gap double by the time the Italian took maximum points for a third time over the Cat.2 Cote de Longefoy.
On the lead into the final climb, it was a tale of dependable Australian super-domestiques in the breakaway as Ben O’Connor tapped out tempo for Gall, Jack Haig pulled hard for his Bahrain team-mate Bilbao, and then, once the riders hit the steep section of the climb after the ski resort of Meribel, Chris Harper shattering the remnants of the move for Jayco-AlUla leader Yates.
With the gap between the break and the yellow jersey group still 2’30”, Sepp Kuss came to the front for team-mate Vingegaard. But in the end it was not so much an attack from the yellow jersey as an implosion for the man in white, as Pogacar suddenly hit the wall with 7km of the 28km ascent still to go – around the same moment Gall threw down the hammer two minutes up the road.
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The moment Pogacar cracked on Stage 17
Pogacar’s bleak message into the radio forced UAE to rally around Adam Yates’s push for the podium, with Majka dropping back from the break to help pace the Briton for the last part of the climb, while Soler dropped further back to support Pogacar.
By now, Vingegaard had pressed the destruction button and was riding past the tiring bodies from the break before picking up Kelderman. The Dutch climber was able to pull Vingegaard for some of the steep parts of the climb – until the pair of them come up against a roadblock in the form of a stalled motorbike and car.
Not even this could derail Vingegaard’s push for a second Tour victory, the 26-year-old catching Gaudu and Bilbao ahead of the 2,304m summit. Going over 22 seconds clear of Simon Yates, Gall took 40 KOM points and the Prix Henri Desgrange on the highest point of the race – putting him right in the thick of the polka dot jersey battle that will be decided on the last day in the mountains on Saturday.
Gall’s thoughts would have been far away from such trivialities, however, when he grappled with the succession of hairpin bends on the narrow 6km descent towards the finish. And despite a nasty sting in the tail in the form of a 17% ramp on the airport runway finish, the Austrian held on for a career best win – just weeks after what was a breakthrough stage victory in the Tour de Suisse.
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'Fairytales do come true' - Gall wins ahead of Yates on Stage 17
“It’s not easy to do a three-week stage race – and also I had the role of the leader after the first few days. But the last few days I have been more and more comfortable,” he said.
“I was afraid I was going to be caught in the last kilometres of the descent. I’m just grateful for all this. I was feeling really great all day. I didn’t think the break would have a chance to go for the victory, but I thought why not get in there to have a little gap on the favourites to anticipate the final climb.”
Thursday’s Stage 18 suits the sprinters while Friday’s Stage 19 is rolling breakaway terrain ahead of the final mountain test in the Vosges on Saturday. What was a thrilling two-way duel for yellow two days ago has become a one-horse race for yellow after Jonas Vingegaard’s latest display of brilliance – and surely not even six categorised climbs on the penultimate day can change that.
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Tadej Pogacar implodes as Jonas Vingegaard closes on second Tour de France title, Felix Gall wins Stage 17 - Eurosport COM
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