Tadej Pogačar (UAE-Team Emirates) has won the mountain TT at the Tour de France and taken the yellow jersey from Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) who imploded in the final test.
It means Slovenian Pogačar has won three stages, will win the race overall, the climbers' classification and the young rider jersey, all in just his second year as a professional.
Pogačar, still aged just 21 years, won the Stage 20 TT today, some 36.2km up La Planche des Belles Filles, by an absolutely staggering margin.
He claimed the test by 1:21 from Tom
Dumoulin (Jumbo Visma) with Richie Porte (Trek-Segafredo) in 3rd on the stage
on the same time.
The margin between Pogačar and 2nd
place today was the same as that which covered all the riders from 2nd to 8th
place at the end of a very hard three-week Tour de France.
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Roglič looked distressed throughout the TT, his usual high cadence and cool sense of composure all gone, compounded by a laboured bike change at the start of the climb.
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He appeared to crack on the decisive day, as Laurent Fignon did in 1989 when he lost the Tour on the final stage TT to Greg LeMond.
Roglič was 5th on the stage today at 1:56 and that means his advantage over Pogačar this morning was well and truly wiped out, and some.
Going into tomorrow’s final stage into Paris, Pogačar is now in yellow and he leads 2nd place Roglič by 59 seconds, having trailed him this morning by 57 seconds.
Porte’s brilliant TT today means he moved into 3rd place,
now 3:30 off yellow, and will take his first ever podium finish at a Grand Tour
at the age of 35 years.
The good news from an Irish perspective was that, as expected, Sam Bennett has made the time cut, and done so easily. The Deceuninck-QuickStep rider will carry green on his back into Paris tomorrow where he is now certain to win the points classification.
Dan Martin (Israel Start-Up Nation) was 31st in the test today, at 5:31, and he has been coming around over the last 10 days after fracturing a bone in his back last month.
Nicolas Roche (Team Sunweb) was 97th today at 8:34 and he has looked very strong on this Tour, going on the attack constantly. Bennett was 131st in the TT today, at 10:00.
More to come.
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