Wout van Aert watched his team leader defend the yellow jersey in a time trial in the penultimate day of the Tour with far more relish than he did two years ago at La Planche des Belles Filles. It certainly helped that Tadej Pogacar had a far larger deficit to close than the 57 seconds he overturned to reel in Primoz Roglic back in 2020 on what was the darkest day in Jumbo-Visma’s history – a day which spawned the now ubiquitous meme of Tom Dumoulin and a masked Van Aert watching on, helpless and in horror, as the Slovenian debutant pulled the rug from under his compatriot’s feet.