Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo Visma) has dropped Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) on the first proper climb of this year's Tour de France, the Col du Marie Blanque.
It was a day when potential overall winner, Jai Hindley (Bora-hansgrohe), lit up the race by going in a large breakaway - of over 30 riders - that gained over four minutes at one point. Pogačar's team - who had Adam Yates in the yellow jersey - stepped up to do much of the chasing.
However, when the remains of the main peloton - still over three minutes down on Hindley - hit the final climb, Jumbo Visma took over at the front and the UAE riders fell away. Even Yates and his brother, Simon Yates (Team Jayco AlUla), were dropped.
Sepp Kuss (Jumbo Visma) soon had the group whittled down to just himself, Vingegaard and Pogačar. And not long after that trio pulled clear of everyone else, Vingegaard pulled the trigger with an attack, with Pogačar unable to respond.
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Vingegaard then put in a huge ride on his own, initially catching and passing most of the remaining riders from the large breakaway. He ultimately put over a minute into Pogačar. Up front, Hindley dropped everyone from the large early group and pressed on alone to win the stage solo and also take the yellow jersey.
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Behind him, Vingegaard eventually formed a group with three riders he scooped up from the early large breakaway; Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek), Felix Gall (AG2R Citroën Team) and Emanuel Buchmann (Bora-hansgrohe).
They finished some 32 seconds down on the solo winner; Ciccone taking the sprint for 2nd place ahead of Gall in 3rd and Buchmann in 4th. Vingegaard was 5th, just two seconds off the other three, and therefore losing 34 seconds to GC rival Hindley.
Pogačar then finished in the next group on the road - 1:38 down on winner Hindley and 1:04 down on Vingegaard. The defending champion, Vingegaard, will be very confident of pulling back that time on Hindley as the race goes on, but the Australian rider won the Giro last year and is a genuine contender to win this race.
Perhaps the most significant factor today was just how unable Pogačar was to respond to the attack of Vingegaard on five stages into the race. The Slovenian fractured his wrist and hand in a crash at Liège-Bastogne-Liège back in April and his performance today - on a climb not regarded as a major feature - very strongly suggests he has a way to go to get himself back into form.
However, in the first kilometre of his attack, Vingegaard put a minute into Pogačar and pulled a minute back from Hindley. And that kind of effort suggests the Dane is in flying form, though Hindley is definitely a potential winner of this race and is now leading overall by 47 seconds from Vingegaard, with Ciccone 3rd at 1:03.
Pogačar, who won the Tour in 2020 and 2021 but was significantly outclassed by Vingegaard on the hardest climbing stages last year, is now in 6th, some 1:47 down on Hindley and 53 seconds down on Vingegaard.
