TOUR’22 Stage 11 BREAKDOWN: What To Count on on the Alpe d’Huez

TOUR’22 Stage 11 BREAKDOWN: Breaking down how Jumbo-Visma executed one of the boldest attacking strategies in modern cycling to take the race lead at the Tour de France. Will there be more of the same on the murderous stage 12 back over the Galibier and finishing on the Alpe d’Huez?

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Jonas Vingegaard executed one of the boldest team strategies in the modern history of the Tour de France to storm clear of his rival GC contenders, including the race-leader Tadej Pogačar, to win the first true Alpine stage and ride into the Yellow Jersey. The winning move, which left Nairo Quintana and Romain Bardet in 2nd and 3rd on the stage, was set up from almost impossibly far out by his extremely aggressive, yet focused, Jumbo-Visma team, who committed to burning every match they had relentlessly attacking Pogacar with two massive Alpine ascents left to race.

Stage 12 to the Alpe d’Huez

These efforts appeared to wear down Pogačar and leave him frazzled when he arrived at the Granon, the final climb on the stage. After following his UAE teammate Rafał Majka up the first half of the climb, Pogačar was unable to respond to early attacks from Quintana and Bardet, and eventually collapsed after Vingegaard realized his biggest rival was vulnerable and laid down a brutal acceleration that saw him put minutes into his competitors in just a few kilometers.

After the dust settled, Vingegaard had secured the Yellow Jersey with a healthy lead over Pogačar and now heads into the second, and far more difficult, half of the race with the task of controlling and defending his race lead.

Stage Top 5:
1) Jonas Vingegaard +0
2) Nairo Quintana +59
3) Romain Bardet +1’10
4) Geraint Thomas +1’38
5) David Gaudu +2’04

GC Stage Time Gaps w/Time Bonuses:
Jonas Vingegaard +0
Nairo Quintana +1’03
Romain Bardet +1’16
Geraint Thomas +1’48
David Gaudu +2’14
Tadej Pogačar +3’01

GC Top Ten:
1) Jonas Vingegaard +0
2) Romain Bardet +2’16
3) Tadej Pogačar +2’22
4) Geraint Thomas +2’26
5) Nairo Quintana +2’37
6) Adam Yates +3’06
7) David Gaudu +3’13
8) Aleksandr Vlasov +7’23
9) Alexey Lutsenko +8’07
10) Enric Mas +9’29

Action from the gun

Stage 11 Notebook:
151km-to-go: Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel attack as soon as the flag drops. For a brief moment, we are reminded of the duel we could have had at this race had Van der Poel been fit. Van Aert is able to parlay the attack into entry into the early breakaway while Van der Poel is dropped and leaves the race.

61.9km: At the top of the first major climb of the day, le Télégraphe, Jumbo-Visma attacks going onto the short descent. They smartly have Christophe Laporte drop back from the breakaway and waiting just around the corner, while Tiesj Benoot and Primoz Roglic accelerate around Pogacar’s only UAE teammate at the front while Jonas Vingegaard marks Pogačar’s wheel.

61.8km: The Jumbo riders meet Laporte, who is waiting like a getaway car, and accelerate down the descent. We can see that Pogačar’s teammate is left behind and the race leader is frantically yelling at his team through his radio to get to the front.

58.4km: Once they hit the false flat leading into the Galibier, Jumbo has Primoz Roglič lay down several attacks and Pogačar expends a ton of energy reeling him in.

58km: Every time Pogačar brings one to heel, the Jumbo duo simply has the other rider go, forcing Pogačar to do the work all over again. He is once again yelling for help into his race radio while Geraint Thomas holds on for dear life.

49.5km: The group swells as the other GC riders, including UAE teammates, are able to catch back on heading onto the steepest slopes of the Galibier. Roglič launches another attack to which Pogačar makes a massive effort to reel in.

48.3km: Pogačar gets to the front and keeps the pace high to keep Jumbo from attacking again, but the increased speed drops his own teammates and once again leaves him isolated.

43.9km: Everything Pogačar drops everyone except Vingegaard, and as the two riders approach the summit, we can clearly see that Pogacar, for one of the first times in his career, looks slightly pained and frazzled from setting a hard pace up one of the hardest climbs in the race, while Vingegaard looks completely fresh and comfortable on his wheel. At this moment, I know that Vingegaard is waiting to attack Pogačar on the Granon, the day’s final climb.

16.2km: Jumbo sends Wout van Aert, who sits up from the break to wait for his teammates, back to pace Roglic’s group back on. Considering this also gives Pogacar’s teammate Rafał Majka a free ride back on, it isn’t clear if it actually makes sense. But, seeing the pace that Van Aert brings them back onto and past the group is incredibly impressive, and also works to decrease Barguil’s gap off the front and ensure Vingegaard can ride for the stage win.

10.1km: As they hit the base of the Granon, Jumbo is a picture of force, with Wout van Aert pulling off and three riders still around Vingegaard.

9.7km: However, just a few moments later, Jumbo is down to just two riders (Vingegaard and Kruijswijk). But as Majka hits the front to take over the pacemaking, we see Pogacar is unable to grab his wheel, which prompts a brief conversation between the Jumbo duo.

9.6km: Quintana takes advantage of Majka being forced to slow his pace by riding off the front. It seems like a semi-fake test attack, but he gets a promising gap and takes off.

4.6km: After sitting on Pogačar’s wheel for 5kms, Vingegaard attacks on the hardest part of the climb and immediately gets a gap and it is clear Pogačar is struggling.

4km: Vingegaard continues to storm up the mountain, catches and passes Quintana at the front, while Pogačar’s conditions continue to worsen as he is left behind by Geraint Thomas.

1km-Finish: Pogačar completely craters and finds himself almost unable to turn the pedals over while Vingegaard surges to the finish line nearly a minute ahead of Quintana for the first Tour stage win of his career. Pogačar crawls over the finish line almost 3 minutes down and loses the race lead to Vingegaard.

Ten Takeaways:

1) Jonas Vingegaard is the best climber in this race

• The 2021 runner-up has looked extremely strong all race, and despite losing time via time bonuses over the first 10 stages, was able to match Pogačar anytime the road went uphill and then proved today that he is the best climber in this race.
• Vingegaard appeared to easily sit on Pogačar’s wheel up the brutal Galibier climb, and once they got to the final climb, Vingegaard uncorked the best performance of his career by averaging 6.1 watts/kgs for nearly 36 minutes, which is one of the best altitude climbing performances in the history of the sport.
• If he can continue at this level of climbing, it will be nearly impossible for any other riders to match, let alone put time into him in the Alps.
• However, while this performance was impressive, we have only completed a single mountain stage so far and Vingegaard’s continued dominance is far from guaranteed.

Jumbo attacked and attacked again

2) Grading Jumbo-Visma’s controversial tactics

• The Jumbo team has played a sit-and-wait strategy with Vingegaard so far as Pogačar stole time bonus after time bonus, but today, this was completely flipped on its head today as he and his Jumbo-Visma teammates started attacking the race-leader Pogacar with two HC (the hardest) climbs left to climb. This incredibly bold and aggressive strategy had the potential to backfire tremendously, but it forced Pogacar to burn valuable matches before the hardest portion of the stage.
• While the result was an inarguable success, Vingegaard’s Jumbo team still took a lot of heat on social media throughout the stage. So, let’s break down if they made the wrong or right call by breaking their decisions down into four separate parts.
• Getting Van Aert into the early breakaway and over the Galibier: This allowed them to have both an insurance policy in case Pogačar dropped Vingegaard on the Galibier and needed a pacing partner to the base of the final climb, an offensive tool in case the opposite occurred, as well as someone to pace back the breakaway before the Granon to ensure Vingegaard could win the stage and get the maximum time out of his effort.
• Having Roglič ride incredibly aggressive and attack Pogačar before the Galibier: This cost them keeping Roglič high up in the GC, but it allowed them to both isolate Pogačar and force him to burn a ton of energy before the hard part of the stage even occurred and likely caused him to crack later on.
• Having Wout van Aert drop back to pace Primoz Roglič back onto the front group before the Granon, which gave Pogačar’s only remaining teammate, Rafał Majka, back to the front after being dropped on the Galibier: This one, at least in theory, gave Jumbo more options once the final climb arrived and gave Roglič a chance to stay in the GC, but, the way it panned out, only bolstered Pogačar’s defenses. In retrospect, it looks fine since it didn’t cause Vingegaard any harm, but it was the strangest decision they made on the day and was perhaps a bridge too far.
• Leaving Vingegaard isolated on the final climb: While Vingegaard was quickly isolated and Pogačar, after all that work to isolate him, still had a teammate in Majka, Jumbo knew this wouldn’t matter once the favorites hit the bottom slopes of the climb. And after all, this was a small price to pay for their aggression earlier in the stage since the gradient was so consistently steep that all Vingegaard would be able to sit on Majka’s pace and attack if he felt capable.

Jumbo played the Roglič card well

3) Primoz Roglič’s selflessness was key to cracking Pogačar

• The key to Jumbo-Visma’s tactics was the presence of the 2020 runner-up Primož Roglič. While the Slovenian was already almost certainly out of the GC picture due to a crash and subsequent injury on stage 5, his countryman Pogačar seemed unable to contain himself whenever Roglic attempted a long-range attack.
• These attacks were impressive on Roglič’s part since they were highly unlikely to actually work and were almost certain to see him dropped and fall out of the GC picture.
• However, these repeated efforts were key to Vingegaar’s time gains since they appeared to both wear down Pogačar as well keeping him from feeding and drinking the way he normally would have, which caused him to finally crack on the final climb.

A hard lesson for Pogačar

4) Tadej Pogačar learned a hard lesson over the course of the stage

• The winner of the last two Tour de Frances appeared invincible until 5km-to-go on the final climb when he suddenly found himself lacking pace, likely due to a hunger knock and losing serious time to his rivals. On one hand, this ‘bonk’ was shocking, but on the other, we already saw him placed under pressure from Vingegaard when he was distanced on Mt Ventoux in 2021, and even at times during the 2020 Tour de France, when he appeared to struggle to stay with Roglic on stage 18.
• While he was ultimately able to weather both of those stumbles without time losses, he wasn’t tested in the same manner as today due to a lack of desire from rival teams to put it all on the line in the way Jumbo did today.
• Throughout the stage, the two-time winner appeared to suffer from the potentially fatal inexperience and overconfidence he has displayed so far in this race.
• Instead of conserving energy through the opening ten stages, he burned match after match with somewhat pointless sprints.
• And on the stage, he sealed his fate by using immense amounts of energy responding to attacks by Roglič, instead of simply focusing on Vingegaard, his closest competition.
• Another major mistake was his decision to lead Vingegaard into the wind up the entire climb of the Galibier without attempting to put Vingegaard into the gutter.
• Talk of the defending champion’s problems stemming from a yet unannounced, or undiscovered, case of COVID was rampant after the stage, and while it is certainly plausible considering the issues inside his team, we should be careful not to write off the possibility that he simply spent far too much energy chasing down Roglič’s repeated attacks, which didn’t give him a chance to eat and drink and caused his collapse.

Pogačar down but not finished

5) He might be down at the moment, but Pogačar will likely come storming back

• Assuming Pogačar doesn’t have COVID, it is all but certain Pogacar will come out swinging and lay it all on the line in an attempt to claw back the time he lost today.
• Outside of his talent, what makes him particularly dangerous is that he already has two Tour overall wins and won’t be content to settle for a podium spot.
• However, while the relative weakness of his UAE team was less of an issue when he was the strongest rider and leading the race, it will become a major issue if he wants to put Vingegaard under pressure.

Bardet in the form of his life

6) Romain Bardet, Nairo Quintan, and Geraint Thomas look back and close to their best

• Bardet, the 2016 Tour de France runner-up, Quintana, the 2015 Tour runner-up, and Geraint Thomas, the 2018 Tour de France winner, showed today that the ghosts of the mid-2010s Tours are back and ready to haunt the New Wave of young stars.
• Bardet and Quintana showed a high racing IQ by not partaking in the wild attacking between Roglič, Vingegaard, and Pogacar before the Galibier, and instead riding their own pace, which allowed them to easily get back onto the lead group over the descent.
• Bardet appeared equally strong at the recent Giro d’Italia, but was forced to withdraw after the 12th stage due to a stomach virus. In retrospect, this was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to his preparation for this Tour and set up this fantastic ride.
• While all looked impressive today, Bardet and Quintana will need to replicate it through the rest of the Alps and the Pyrenees if they want a chance of finishing on the podium against superior time trialists and prove that they can recapture the consistency in the mountains that has escaped them in recent years.

Yellow now for Vingegaard… It’s a long way to Paris

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# Spencer Martin is the author of the cycling-analysis newsletter Beyond the Peloton that breaks down the nuances of each race and answers big picture questions surrounding team and rider performance. Sign up now to get full access to all the available content and race breakdowns. #

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