The yellow jersey is said to give its wearer wings, but this was not confirmed at this year’s Tour de France. Jai Hindley won the jersey in the fifth stage and lost it immediately in the sixth when he was not enough for the pace of the Jumbo-Visma team at the Tourmalet, more precisely the pace of domestic players Wilk Kelderman and Sepp Kuss. He was far from the only one: only Tadej Pogačar survived.
Once their yellow and white express had left, there was no going back. Hindley reached the top of the famous climb, already known from the 1910 Tour, only two minutes late. There were still forty kilometers to the finish line, but it was not even within the power of the winner of last year’s Giro to catch the pair of Vingegaard and Pogačar, for whom a locomotive named Wout van Aert was also waiting in the valley.
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Montage of the 6th stage of the Tour de France
“It was a wonderful moment when I could be in the yellow jersey. I wanted to ride my own pace and my own race. But as soon as they started, I tried to ride with them, but I just didn’t have it,” he didn’t look for excuses at the finish line. His colleagues from the Bora-hansgrohe team tried, but it became clear that this team simply does not have the ability to hold the yellow jersey in the mountains.
“To put it simply, as soon as they passed me on the Tourmalet, it was over,” added Hindley, who thanked all his colleagues from the German team and especially Emanuel Buchmann, who, despite being fourth overall, dragged Hindley through the valley under the final hill. “But that jersey was already a thing of the past at the Tourmalet,” added the Australian cyclist, who finished sixth in the stage with a deficit of two minutes and 39 seconds.
And in the end it was far from a bad result, as he was the first at the finish line in Cauterets after the “unattainable” Danish-Slovenian duo. In addition, Hindley is in a relatively comfortable position, as he is in third place in the overall standings, one minute and forty seconds ahead of the nearest pursuer, fourth Simon Yates.
“I felt pretty good on the final hill and ended up being the best of the rest of the field, if I may say so myself. So that’s actually a pretty good position for the rest of the race. I’ll never forget this day,” he added, adding that although he didn’t keep the jersey , the memories will stay with him, and besides, he has a lot to show on the Tour.
Despite everything, Hindley’s team principal Rolf Aldag was also relatively satisfied. “Perhaps we worked a little too much at the beginning of the stage and then we were sorry for it at the Tourmalet. But we are not a team here that wants to win the Tour. We want to get on the podium, for which we took another important step today,” assessed the former competitor the Telekom team.
The next stages will show how Hindley will continue to do well and whether he will stay in the top three. The next one starts already on Friday. Watch the live broadcast from 1:50 p.m. on CT sport and CT sport Plus.
