Tadej Pogacar ‘forgets his team-mates are human’ says Dan Lloyd ahead of Stage 14 of Tour de France 2023

Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) took a chunk out of Jonas Vingegaard’s Tour de France lead on Stage 13 – eight seconds to be exact – but the tactics of the Slovenian were questioned on The Breakaway. UAE Team Emirates worked all day on the front to control the break for Pogacar, who put four seconds into Vingegaard and collected a further four in bonus seconds. But the wisdom of that work was called into question by The Breakaway team ahead of Stage 14.

Ad “[He] could have let Jumbo-Visma do all that work yesterday and [Pogacar] could have gone to the top of that climb and did exactly what he did," said Adam Blythe. Tour de FranceTour de France neutralised after ‘extraordinarily nasty moment’ on Stage 142 HOURS AGO “For the four seconds, he had the whole team on the front all day. He could have done exactly the same but just without the four bonus seconds, and he would have saved all his team.

“Great that he was able to get the extra four seconds – but that is all it is, for three-and-a-half hours’ work.” Dan Lloyd, alongside Blythe, Orla Chennaoui and Robbie McEwen, added that Pogacar can be guilty of judging his team-mates by his own prowess. As a result, he can ask too much of them. “I do worry that Pogacar thinks about things based on how he's feeling and forgets that his team-mates are human,” said Lloyd.

«When you watch him ride up to his team-mates yesterday when they've been going pretty hard from the foot of the climb, it's obvious how easy he's finding it. He's talking to them, he's on the radio, he's having a drink, etc — all signs that you're not really anywhere close to your limit. And we saw it again at the finish.