13:17 – Vingegaard’s curt response
“Pogacar is not my only opponent. We didn’t want to lose time. The others may not understand our tactics, but that’s their problem. So it wasn’t a lack of balls, it was just an intelligent race,” explained the Dane in a press conference on this rest day.
13:00 – Evenepoel also tackles Vingegaard
“It’s a bit of a shame that Vingegaard isn’t riding with me and Pogacar, otherwise the race would have been over. We could have taken 3 or 4 minutes. It’s their tactic, there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s a good day, I had fun, I proved myself on the trails” explained the second in the general classification and winner of the time trial last Friday.
12:00 – The good start of the Tour de France for the French
What can we say about this start to the Tour de France for the French except bravo! Three stage victories with Bardet on the first who, as a bonus, took the Yellow Jersey for the first time in his career, Vauquelin the next day who imposed himself like a tough guy before setting an excellent time and then, yesterday, with the 3rd victory of Anthony Turgis.
11:15 – But an annoyed Pogacar
The Slovenian was particularly sharp after the finish of the 9th stage, especially on the Visma. “I think that at Visma, they only looked at me and not enough at the others, regretted the yellow jersey on France 2. I think there could be a backlash later. It would have been good to have gone there, we would have consolidated the podium. But that’s not what Visma wants. They only look at me, and they’re going to do that until the end. I’ll remember that, everyone does their own race, that doesn’t bother me. I like to race with my heart, today was a race to do that, he continued. I think Vingegaard is afraid of me, if he wasn’t afraid of me, he would have taken over, especially since he had a teammate. They’re afraid of me, they only think about my wheel and don’t think about Remco (Evenepoel) or Primoz (Roglic).”
10:45 – Pogacar leader
Let’s first take a look at the general classification on this rest day with Tadej Pogacar, winner of the Giro, already the undisputed leader of this Tour de France. With a stage victory and an impressive thirst, the UAE rider is, admittedly, only 33 seconds ahead of Remco Evenepoel, but already 1’15” ahead of Jonas Vingegaard and 1’36” ahead of Primoz Roglic.
10:30 – First day of rest
It’s the first day of rest this Monday, July 8th on the roads of the Tour de France. A well-deserved rest after an intense first week and especially a hellish last stage.