{"id":4347,"date":"2025-07-18T02:30:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T02:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/4347\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T02:30:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T02:30:08","slug":"theyre-certainly-not-out-of-it-tour-de-france-podium-fight-is-the-races-biggest-point-of-intrigue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/4347\/","title":{"rendered":"‘They\u2019re certainly not out of it’ – Tour de France podium fight is the race’s biggest point of intrigue"},"content":{"rendered":"

The destination of the yellow jersey could be more or less assured, even with nine stages left, but the real intrigue in the Tour de France i<\/a>s the final make-up of the podium. If we\u2019re to assume Tadej Poga\u010dar <\/a>and Jonas Vingegaard <\/a>will finish one and two, guessing who\u2019ll be third is far harder.<\/p>\n

Remco Evenepoel<\/a> occupied that spot last year and is third again right now, but the Belgian ceded 3:35 to Poga\u010dar on the Hautacam on stage 12 and was distanced on the penultimate climb. Though he did mount a spirited comeback, the signs from the first day in the high mountains is that the Soudal Quick-Step rider\u2019s position on the podium is vulnerable.<\/p>\n

And the vultures, for whom a third-placed finish at the Tour would be a career highlight, are circling.<\/p>\n

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Ahead of the next two days in the Pyrenees \u2013 one a mountain time trial and the other a summit finish on Superbagneres \u2013 just two minutes and 59 seconds separate Evenepoel in third and Tobias Halland Johannessen in eighth. Sandwiched between the pair are Florian Lipowitz, K\u00e9vin Vauquelin, Oscar Onley <\/a>and Primo\u017e Rogli\u010d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Very few people would have predicted Johannessen \u2013 despite being a former Tour de l\u2019Avenir winner \u2013 Onley and Vauquelin being in the podium fight, but here they are. And it\u2019s very much game on, especially after Matteo Jorgenson lost 10 minutes and Ben Healy fell from first to 11th.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was quite surprised on the first climb when I saw Remco and Jorgenson getting dropped,\u201d 22-year-old Onley, in sixth place, said after the 12th stage. \u201cI guess they suffered in the heat, but it\u2019s still a long way to Paris and they\u2019re certainly not out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

His Picnic PostNL sports director, Matt Winston, has been preaching patience throughout this Tour, and he continues to do so. \u201cWe always said we weren\u2019t going to throw time away,\u201d he said, \u201cand if we did lose time we\u2019d focus on stages as our main goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were fifth on the stage today which is a nice stage result and after the time trial we\u2019ll make a real assessment. When the GC guys are racing every day on the mountain stages, you have to keep focused. Moving up on the GC as part of that is a massive bonus.\u201d<\/p>\n

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One place ahead of Onley, and crucially three places above his teammate Rogli\u010d, is Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe\u2019s Lipowitz. The German, 24, was third on the day and looks to be the best of the rest among the climbers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we can be super happy,\u201d he said. \u201cWe now have two guys who are super good on the GC, and that gives us a lot of opportunities in the next few days.\u201d Rogli\u010d praised his younger teammate: \u201cI\u201dm really happy and hope he keeps this level up until the finish,\u201d the veteran Slovenian said.<\/p>\n

Vauquelin, meanwhile, is fifth, and he remains France\u2019s biggest hope and interest. He proved on the Hautacam that he has the firepower to remain in the podium fight until the end.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m happy to move up a gear,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was really great. I\u2019m very happy.\u201d Second at the Tour de Suisse in June, the Ark\u00e9a-B&B Hotels rider credited an altitude training camp at Isola 2000 for preparing him for this year\u2019s Tour. \u201cI started to get a better understanding of the mountains when I was there. I worked a lot on my climbing. Mentally too, I think it was a mental barrier to overcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next two days in the Pyrenees will reorder the GC once more, but the race for the final podium place looks like being a captivating and topsy-turvy battle between six riders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The destination of the yellow jersey could be more or less assured, even with nine stages left, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-4347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}