Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) has rejected any possible criticism against Tour de France GC rival Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease A Bike) for failing to work with him on the slopes of Isola 2000 as the two were dropped by stage winner and race leader Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates).
Evenepoel and Vingegaard finally crossed the line 1:42 down on Pogačar after the Slovenian attacked around half way up the 16.1 kilometre Alpine ascent, all but sealing his overall Tour de France victory. The race concludes on Sunday with an individual time trial in Nice.
Evenepoel tried to attack the Visma-Lease A Bike racer once after Pogačar had gone clear, only for Vingegaard quickly to close down the gap, and the two then shadowed each other all the way to the finish with no further skirmishing. Vingegaard thus remains in second overall, 1:58 ahead of Evenepoel, with Pogačar's lead stretching to over five minutes on GC.
Vingegaard even patted Evenepoel on the arm as the two crossed the line, in a friendly gesture after they had ridden together in what seemed like a virtual truce for most of the climb. But as Evenepoel told reporters afterwards, he had no problem at all with the Dane's largely passive willingness to follow his wheel.
"When Tadej went for it, he put everybody on the limit," Evenepoel told reporters at the finish. "Then when he attacked, nobody could follow him. Then when I found my own pace, I found it was the same as Vingegaard. So I waited for him so we could ride up together.
"I could tell that Jonas wasn't on a great day because when Pogačar attacked, he went straight onto my wheel."
Evenepoel insisted that he was not angry with Vingegaard's lack of collaboration and that "I won't even say that I didn't like his attitude.
"My key takeaway from the stage is that a double Tour de France champion chose to stay behind me, rather than taking turns, and there's no shame in that. He even thanked me afterwards for having taken him up the climb, and I think that was a nice gesture."
Evenepoel argued that Vingegaard was simply fighting to defend his second place overall because he felt he could not win the Tour de France and pointed out that at the end of the day, such is Pogačar's superiority, it made no difference whether they had lost 90 seconds or six minutes.
While he is well clear of João Almeida, Pogačar's teammate who is running fourth on GC at more than 15 minutes, Evenepoel continued to preach caution about where he would finish overall. That said, the World Time Trial Champion still has the 'trump card' to play - the final race against the clock in Nice.
"There are three GC races right now," Evenepoel concluded. "There's Tadej, whom I predicted would be unbeatable from the start of the race, then there's Jonas and me, and then there's everybody else."
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