Strength in numbers helps Vingegaard overhaul Pogacar in Tour de France

The history of the Tour de France is marked by what French observers refer to – while licking their lips – as bouleversements, when the obvious race scenario is turned upside down in an unexpected and dramatic way. One of those great upsets took place this week, when the wraith-like Dane Jonas Vingegaard dislodged the race’s No 1 favourite, Tadej Pogacar, whose domination of the first 10 days had led most onlookers to predict a seamless third overall title.

Mostly, the Tour proceeds according to a formbook that is written early on; usually, the race belongs to the favourite who performs best at the first mountain top finish or time trial. That was how the 2022 Tour looked, but on Wednesday, when the stage finished atop the giant Alpine climb of the Col du Granon, Vingegaard and the Jumbo-Visma team first harassed Pogacar mercilessly before dispatching him with clinical ruthlessness.

It will take its place in the Tour’s pantheon of great turnarounds. Marco Pantani destroying Jan Ullrich on the Galibier in a torrential rainstorm in 1998 was probably the most recent occasion while 1989, when Greg LeMond seized yellow from Laurent Fignon in a final-day time trial, will probably always remain the ultimate example, as well as being the Tour’s greatest comeback.

The French have affectionate memories of Bernard Thévenet unexpectedly destroying Eddy Merckx in 1975, while in 1976 Lucien Van Impe won his only Tour with an epic, and unlikely attack, through the Pyrenees.

That it is necessary to go back so far shows how rare Vingegaard’s achievement is, no matter whether he wins the Tour or Pogacar stages a bouleversement of his own.

Vingegaard’s victory was also a rare example of a decisive Tour stage where team tactics worked to