Vingegaard hails Pogacar after latest Tour de France skirmish

COL DU GRAND COLOMBIER, France: Defending champion Jonas Vingegaard hailed his rivalry with Tadej Pogacar after surviving the Slovenian’s latest attack to cling on to the overall lead of the Tour de France on the Grand Colombier mountain on Friday.

Vingegaard finished just four seconds behind Pogacar after a sudden late attack that also earned Pogacar a four-second time bonus.

That left Dane Vingegaard with a wafer-thin 9sec overall advantage, after a stage won by Polish Ineos Grenadiers rider Michal Kwiatkowski on a breakaway.

At the end of the stage Vingegaard was all smiles, while his Slovenian rival was po-faced despite his latest gain.

The defending champion explained his mood by referring to the record books.

“In a final like this you can only be happy with how it worked out,” said Vingegaard.

“History has shown that the Tour rarely gets won by a few seconds,” he said. “Maybe once or twice, maybe here too, who knows, but I don’t think so.”

For once, Vingegaard also opened up about Pogacar after previously insisting he never thinks about him.

“It’s a nice rivalry we have. He’s one of the best, if not the best rider in the world and it’s a nice fight we have going on,” he said.

Pogacar and UAE set a blistering tempo from about halfway up the Colombier. Vingegaard said his Jumbo-Visma team expected the attack,

“We knew Team UAE would do this, so we told some of the guys to forget about it and not get involved and this is what happened. So I think our tactics worked well,” said Vingegaard, who was had just one team-mate, Sepp Kuss, with him most of the way.

“It might have looked like I was alone but I never felt like that. I felt my tactics worked.”

“This is how I planned to do it, just held on, that’s our