Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) has rejected any doable criticism towards 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 2 have been dropped by stage winner and race chief Tadej Pogačar (UAE Group Emirates).
Evenepoel and Vingegaard lastly crossed the road 1:42 down on Pogačar after the Slovenian attacked round half method up the 16.1 kilometre Alpine ascent, all however sealing his total Tour de France victory. The race concludes on Sunday with a person time trial in Good.
Evenepoel tried to assault the Visma-Lease A Bike racer as soon as after Pogačar had gone clear, just for Vingegaard shortly to shut down the hole, and the 2 then shadowed one another all the best way to the end with no additional skirmishing. Vingegaard thus stays in second total, 1:58 forward of Evenepoel, with Pogačar’s lead stretching to over 5 minutes on GC.
Vingegaard even patted Evenepoel on the arm as the 2 crossed the road, in a pleasant gesture after they’d ridden collectively in what appeared like a digital truce for a lot of the climb. However as Evenepoel informed reporters afterwards, he had no drawback in any respect with the Dane’s largely passive willingness to observe his wheel.
“When Tadej went for it, he put everyone on the restrict,” Evenepoel informed reporters on the end. “Then when he attacked, no one might observe him. Then when I discovered my very own tempo, I discovered it was the identical as Vingegaard. So I waited for him so we might journey up collectively.
“I might inform that Jonas wasn’t on an excellent day as a result of when Pogačar attacked, he went straight onto my wheel.”
Evenepoel insisted that he was not offended with Vingegaard’s lack of collaboration and that “I will not even say that I did not like his perspective.
“My key takeaway from the stage is {that a} double Tour de France champion selected to remain behind me, somewhat than taking turns, and there isn’t any disgrace in that. He even thanked me afterwards for having taken him up the climb, and I feel that was a pleasant gesture.”
Evenepoel argued that Vingegaard was merely combating to defend his second place total as a result of he felt he couldn’t win the Tour de France and identified that on the finish of the day, such is Pogačar’s superiority, it made no distinction whether or not they had misplaced 90 seconds or six minutes.
Whereas he’s properly away from João Almeida, Pogačar’s teammate who’s working fourth on GC at greater than quarter-hour, Evenepoel continued to evangelise warning about the place he would end total. That mentioned, the World Time Trial Champion nonetheless has the ‘trump card’ to play – the ultimate race towards the clock in Good.
“There are three GC races proper now,” Evenepoel concluded. “There’s Tadej, whom I predicted can be unbeatable from the beginning of the race, then there’s Jonas and me, after which there’s everyone else.”
