Pogacar and Vingegaard draw a blank as Tour heads into rest day

Saint Gervais — Jonas Vingegaard and Slovenian Tadej Pogacar shadowed each other on Sunday before they face a highly anticipated individual time trial which the Danish defending champion will start with a 10sec advantage after a rest day.

Pogacar, who looked to be struggling in the final ascent of the 15th stage won by Dutch Wout Poels, attacked just inside the final kilometre on the Bettex climb (7km at 7.7%) but could not drop the Jumbo-Visma rider.

Vingegaard tried to catch Pogacar off guard in the last steep bend but both rolled over the line together, 6min 4sec behind Poels, who gave Bahrain Victorious their second stage win this year, a month after the death of teammate Gino Mader at the Tour de Suisse.

On a 179km trek featuring three first-category climbs, Vingegaard and Pogacar put their teams to work but let a large breakaway go after a huge pile-up, signalling they would not go for the stage win.

Vingegaard’s team mate Wout van Aert jumped away from the leading group near the top of the Col des Aravis, followed by Poels and Krists Neilands.

The trio quickly caught Marc Soler, only for Latvia’s Neilands to crash in the descent as he tried to grab a water bottle from a race motorbike.

Poels, Van Aert and Soler opened a 1:30 gap over the breakaway group and Poels attacked at the foot of the Cote des Amerands (2.7km at 10.9%).

He never looked back and crossed the line 2:08 ahead of Van Aert for his first victory in a grand tour with France’s Mathieu Burgaudeau taking third place, three minutes off the pace.

Reuters