Benson Bulletin: Tour de France stage 7 winners and losers 🇫🇷
A round up from today's stage, a major analysis of the GC and expert insight from Matt White
Hi Subscribers,
Seven stages into this year’s Tour de France, and we’ve effectively seen six - excluding the time trial - one-day races, with Tadej Pogačar, Mathieu van der Poel, and similarly explosive riders dominating proceedings.
It means that the GC standings have adopted a familiar but specific dynamic, with Pogačar well clear at the top, and only one rider, Remco Evenepoel, remaining within a minute of the yellow jersey.
The gaps further down the overall standings are considerable, with Jonas Vinegaard at 1:17, Primož Roglič at 3:06, Mattias Skjelmose at 3:43, and the likes of Carlos Rodriguez, Enric Mas, and Ben O’Connor between four and eight minutes behind. It’s been chaos, but the race enters a new phase on Monday with the incredibly tough Le Mont-Dore Puy de Sancy stage. We have two sprint stages before that, but the general classification will take on a new dynamic once we begin racing over climbs that last five minutes.
The top three GC contenders in this race are unlikely to change, with Pogačar, Vingegaard, and Evenepoel set to finish on the podium in Paris, especially with João Almeida in the wars. Today, we’ll analyse the GC, the nature of the racing so far at the Tour, and everything in between, featuring Mauro Gianetti, Matt White, Vingegaard, and others.
Daniel 🫶
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Winners
Pogačar’s ruthless streak continues but Almeida's woes are a concern 🇸🇮 🇵🇹
The defending champion is precisely where we’d expect him to be in this year’s race, with two stage wins to his name and a comfortable lead on GC. He’s continued seamlessly from where he left off at Criterium du Dauphiné a few weeks ago and remains the clear favourite for a fourth Tour win.
On stage 7, he again utilised his team’s impressive depth, with Tim Wellens, Nils Politt, and others controlling the peloton and then setting a fierce pace on the final two climbs. When the pressure increased, Pogačar drew out his two GC rivals before easing up when Evenepoel moved to the front. The Belgian seemed more focused on stage hunting than trying to gain time on several rivals, but in the sprint for the line, Pogačar was too strong.
He’s back in yellow, and his team is dominating the race, with genuinely significant gaps at this early stage.
However, Almeida’s crash is a concern. The Tour de Suisse winner was a potential contender for the podium, as Matt White will explain and analyse later in this newsletter, and seeing him hit the deck with the force he did, will have UAE Team Emirates-XRG praying that their second-best rider can continue in the race. He was a match for Visma’s Matteo Jorgenson, and probably better, to be honest. UAE have a packed roster but this setback, come the third week, could be telling.
The team just released the following statement.
"João suffered a heavy fall in the stage finale today. Thankfully, there was no serious injury, and he was able to finish the stage. After clinical examination, we immediately took him for relevant radiological investigations. It’s confirmed he has an uncomplicated left-sided rib fracture, as well as some profound abrasions to his body. Fortunately no concussion. We will be monitoring him carefully going forward. The next few days willl be difficult for him, but at this point, he should be able to start tomorrow’s stage,” said Dr. Adrian Rotunno (Medical Director) .
At the finish, team boss Mauro Gianetti had this to say.
“The only thing that wasn't part of our good tactics was João's crash. We just hope he's not too injured. It was a fast crash and I saw two Bahrain riders crash too,” Mauro Gianetti told me and other sweaty journalists at the finish.
“We were waiting for a lot of attacks and a lot of fighting. We were concentrated, and Mathieu van der Poel wanted to try to keep the jersey, so we worked together and were able to keep the gap under control. In the final, the team was amazing, and Tadej finished it off with a nice victory. Joao got going again, and then we'll check him. Hopefully, there's nothing broken because he's a very important rider for us,” the team boss said.
“The first week was amazing, very tense and very hard. We saw an incredible battle day by day, and we saw a lot of fatigue in the riders. Hopefully, the stage for the sprinters will be a chance to recover before the first mountain stage on Monday,” he added.
You can watch a video interview with Gianetti on my Instagram stories.
Believe in Vingegaard 🙏 🇩🇰
Here are the facts. Vingegaard has made a massive jump from where he was in the Dauphiné. While he’s never been a slouch on the punchy terrain, he’s improved a lot, and although he had a shocking TT, we’ve not yet reached his favoured topography when the road tilts upwards and we start climbing the proper stuff.
Honestly, we can’t judge how close he is to Pogačar, in terms of long-term prospects within this race, until at least stage 10. If Pogačar’s blows him away on the first summit finish and finds three minutes, then fine, the race is over, but until then, the battle for the yellow jersey is wide open. He was second today, lost a few more seconds, but clung to Pogačar’s wheel and showed no signs of weakness.
"It's been as I said, I feel like it’s been seven GC days already, six at least, it's been a hard first week, so it will be curious to see what it does in the third week, obviously, I think when you look at it, it's been a really hard Tour de France in general this year,” Vingegaard said at the finish.
"No, of course, you can have a bad day. I had a bad day, and normally I dont have so many, so it was not nice, but still I believe in myself, and I believe that we can make a difference in the second and third week,” he added.
Matt White’s race analysis 🇦🇺
Post stage, I talked to Matt White about the GC and how the race is unfolding. Listen up, because he knows what he’s talking about: