Tour de France returned to the Col du Granon after 36 years and made history again.
In 1986, when the climb was included into the program of Tour de France for the very first time, five-time winner Bernard Hinault lost the yellow jersey. His teammate, Greg LeMond took it over and won the general classification that year.
The 11th stage of Tour de France 2022 promised great moments from the very beginning of the day, when Wout van Aert (Jumbo -Visma) and Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Fenix) escaped together. What a breakaway duo, everyone said.
But since then so many extraordinary things happened( f. e. Mathieu van der Poel abandoned the race), that these few early km seemed to be like several years old memories.
Although Tadej Pogacar (UAE Emirates) has won Tour de France twice already, actually,
his road to Paris was relatively free from big troubles on any of these occasions.
Untill today, when Jumbo-Visma launched a “now or never” attack in the middle of the race against him. They really wanted to break the rider in the yellow jersey. And their tactic worked well.
So well, that when Jonas Vingegaard launched his final attack on the Col du Granon, with 5 km to go, we were able to witness any kind of weakness of Pogacar riding in yellow, well… basically… for the very first time.
Already last year, on the ascent of Mont Ventoux, only Vingegaard was able to launch an attack against Pogacar with the possibility of breaking him (nonetheless, it didn’t deliver the result Jumbo-Visma hoped).
But what didn’t happened one year earlier, it happened on the top of Col du Granon. Jonans Vingegaard won the stage and took the yellow jersey.
More important, the events of the day shaked up the dinamics of the whole race. Now Tadej Pogacar has to find the weak point of the rider in yellow. And unlike to 2020, when the Slovenian rider considered rather as an underdog, now everyone knows he is pretty much capable to turn the tide and take back the jis leading position any time.
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