It was 35 years ago that the Tour had opted for an uphill finish on the mythical Puy de Dôme. After today we can say with certainty that it won’t be that long again before we come back with the Tour de France.
A large group including Michael Woods, Victor Campenaerts, Matej Mohoric, polka dot jersey Neilson Powless, Aleksej Loetsenko and Matteo Jorgenson received the green light from Jumbo-Visma early in the stage.
A battle on two fronts seemed to be in the making and it came. The 14 leaders received more than fifteen minutes as a gift from the classification men and took plenty of time towards Puy de Dôme to thin things out on the way.
Just under 50km from the finish, spring revelation Matteo Jorgenson embarked on a solo effort to say the least. He also seemed to hold his own on the terribly steep Puy de Dôme, but was overtaken with the finish line almost in sight by the experienced Michael Woods, who had arranged the final climb perfectly.
In the yellow group it was waiting for the penultimate kilometer. Jumbo-Visma paved the way for leader Jonas Vingegaard, but it was rival Tadej Pogacar who discovered a few cracks in the armor of the cool Dane in the penultimate kilometer. It ultimately resulted in a time gain of 8 seconds for the Slovenian.
