The game of poker that is the 2023 Tour de France continued in the shadow of Mont Blanc as the defending Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard and his closest rival, Tadej Pogacar, bluffed their way to the summit finish of stage 15 at Saint-Gervais Mont Blanc.
The only meaningful attack throughout the stage came from Pogacar in the final kilometre but was contained easily by the Dane. There was no change to the overall standings and with their next duel coming in Tuesday’s 22.4km time trial, they remain divided by a mere 10 seconds.
Wout Poels of Belgium won the 179km stage, starting in Les Gets, after dropping his namesake Wout van Aert on the steep climb of the Cote des Amerands, 11km from the finish.
The two Wouts were part of a three-man breakaway, including Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates colleague Marc Soler, that reached Domancy, at the foot of the final climb, with a seven-and-a-half minute lead on the main peloton.
As Poels took his Bahrain Victorious team’s second win, the real drama was expected further down the mountain, as Adam Yates paced team leader Pogacar up the final climb, with Vingegaard glued to his rival’s rear wheel, anticipating the inevitable explosion of power. But it never really came and the pair rode to the finish together.
The weekend was dominated by talk of mad men and motorbikes, after over-excited spectators and in-race ‘motos’ caused a series of incidents. On Saturday, a potentially telling attack from Pogacar was blocked by two motorbikes, shooting for TV and photography, hemmed in by raucous crowds, near the top of the Col de Joux Plane.
In Sunday’s stage, a roadside spectator caught one of the riders and caused another mass stack-up early on. Later, the Israel-Premier Tech rider Krists Neilands crashed after trying to take a drink from an in-race motorbike on a fast descent.
