Despite spending his afternoon launching several searing attacks on the gravel sectors around Troyes on stage 9 of the Tour de France, Tadej Pogačar closes out his Sunday without an extended GC lead heading into the race's first rest day.
The Slovenian tried on multiple occasions to leave behind his main yellow jersey rivals, including Remco Evenepoel, Jonas Vingegaard, and Primož Roglič.
He succeeded several times, bringing Vingegaard and Evenepoel along for the ride. However, come the end of the 199km stage, the 'big four' all finished together, 1:48 down on stage winner Anthony Turgis.
In the post-race press conference following the stage, Pogačar – a winner of gravel races Strade Bianche and Jaén Paraíso Interior in the past – said that his moves were as much about his enjoyment of racing on the gritty surface as much as gaining time on rivals.
"It was just that I like to ride on the gravel, I guess. It's in my nature, I think," Pogačar said. "Also, it's way better to ride in the front than in the back so I tried a couple of times to make a gap, but with the headwind, it was pretty, pretty shit, so…”
Pogačar said he didn't have a clear picture in mind of what he'd do ahead of the stage, billed as the third major GC showdown before the first rest day in Orléans. He said that the opening run to the first of the 14 gravel sectors was "hectic" and that the race from then onwards was "super hard".
The final run back towards Troyes brought with it a headwind, which made it too hard to make moves stick, he added.
"I didn't have a clear visualisation before the stage," Pogačar said. "I was just wanting to survive but then a lot already happened already. When I stopped for a pee, we started to go fast. Then we came to the first sector and on the uphill it was already splitting a lot and I saw that the race would be super hard and then it was.
"The end was really hard, but it would've been even harder if there would have been a tailwind. So yeah, the end was more or less like I expected, but we tried a little bit also."
Pogačar made moves off the front with 77km, 21km, and 7km to go on the stage. His first, on the gravel of the fourth-category Côte de Chacenay, saw him chase down Evenepoel along with Vingegaard. However, it was brought back 7km later after the Dane refused to work.
His second, at the Verrières sector, saw Vingegaard – racing on teammate Jan Tratnik's bike – and Visma-Lease A Bike teammate Matteo Jorgenson go with him, but again, only lasted a handful of kilometres with the Visma men refusing to take turns.
The last of his accelerations, on the final gravel sector of the day, Saint-Parres-aux-Tetres, didn't succeed either, but the Slovenian was easily the most aggressive of the GC men on the day.
Pogačar later said that he expected the Visma riders to do that, even if Vingegaard languishes at 1:15 behind him on GC and 42 seconds behind second-placed Evenepoel.
"Honestly, I don't know. I expected that, honestly," he said. "But I'm guessing they kind of underestimated others – Remco Evenepoel, Primož Roglič, the other guys.
"Today me and Jonas could have ridden away from the other GC guys – or when it was me, Remco, and Jonas to secure the podium places more. It's just the way I'm seeing it, but everybody has their own race. I can't say anything against that. It's just the way it is."
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