{"id":796669,"date":"2026-07-12T07:44:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T07:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/796669\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T07:44:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T07:44:16","slug":"tadej-pogacars-dominance-will-open-up-the-race-and-give-us-more-opportunities-luke-plapps-tour-de-france-diary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/796669\/","title":{"rendered":"Tadej Poga\u010dar’s dominance will open up the race and give us more opportunities – Luke Plapp’s Tour de France diary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Grand Tours are a bit of a time black hole. Once you start one, any sense of time gets sucked into the black hole. It\u2019s eat, sleep, race, repeat. At this point in the race, I couldn\u2019t tell you what day of the week it is, but I know that we\u2019re almost at the first rest day of the Tour de France<\/a>. After over a week of hard racing, I\u2019m looking forward to it. It\u2019s a chance to switch off, get some extra sleep, maybe take a coffee ride with the boys, and catch up with my friends and family.<\/p>\n

This is my second Tour de France, and it feels a little more like a formality this time around, like any other race. Last season, when I made my debut, there was so much hype and excitement around it, and I didn\u2019t know so much what to expect. It was a lot to take in. Now that I have my first one done, I wouldn\u2019t say I\u2019m a Tour veteran just yet, but I feel like I\u2019ve got the swing of things and can manage the stresses of the race much more easily.<\/p>\n

Tour de France diary\"LukeTour de France diary<\/p>\n

Luke Plapp<\/p>\n

Professional road cyclist for Jayco-AlUla<\/p>\n

Luke Plapp is an Australian professional road cyclist, currently riding for Team Jayco-AlUla at the Tour de France. The Melbourne native, who is a three-time Australian national road and time trial champion, will be sharing his experiences from this summer’s Tour with Cyclingnews.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The first week has gone by quickly, and that team time trial on stage 1<\/a> already feels like it was a lifetime ago. We\u2019ve already done over 1,000km since Barcelona. Getting to open the race with a team time trial in the Catalan capital was pretty special.<\/p>\n

More Tour de France columns & opinion<\/p>\n

\n

\"Side\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: SWpix.com\/Zac Williams)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always heard from others that the final stage of the Volta a Catalunya is one of the best race days of the year, so it was amazing to experience it for myself. The crowds lining the roadside were incredible, and my ears were definitely ringing afterwards.<\/p>\n

I love the TTT (in my opinion, it\u2019s the best discipline; I won\u2019t hear otherwise), and the team is passionate about it and has always done well in the discipline. We\u2019ve been working on our TTT project for quite some time, so we were pretty pumped for the first stage. We came out to Girona for a small camp a few days before the race to do some TTT prep and dial in our set-ups ahead of the big day.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have a GC rider for this race, so we didn\u2019t need to play it conservatively on the day, and we were willing to risk it all for a result. Obviously, the stage didn\u2019t quite go as we hoped; we definitely wanted more than 10th place, but I\u2019m proud of the boys and how we all went for it. There will be more opportunities for us during this race, and we\u2019ve already shown in the first week that we\u2019re prepared to take on any chance we can.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Luke\n<\/p>\n

Plapp was in the breakaway on stage 3 before Tadej Poga\u010dar ultimately triumphed at the finish in Les Angles (Image credit: Tim de Waele\/Getty Images)
\nPoga\u010dar’s dominance and thriving in the heat<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been tough so far for the breakaway with the GC teams like UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Visma-Lease a Bike keeping a tight grip on the race in the opening stages. We saw how they shut down the Tourmalet stage when Ben [O’Connor] had a go off the front, and that they weren\u2019t going to let anything go. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a bad thing, though.<\/p>\n

Now that Tadej Poga\u010dar and UAE have marked their dominance with such a big lead<\/a>, I believe it could open the race up for teams like us who want to try and get out in the breakaway. I think it will open the race up a little more as we get into the second week, and particularly the back half of the race, and we\u2019ll see more opportunities coming to us. I\u2019m looking forward to getting stuck in and taking my chances, and so are the rest of our boys.<\/p>\n

Of course, the heat is also going to play a factor in how the rest of the race plays out. It\u2019s been hot right from the start, and the high temperatures have been a ‘hot’ topic in the bunch during the first week, with staying cool being very important. There\u2019s been plenty of ice socks down the jersey and bidons over the head to keep the core temperature down.<\/p>\n

I actually enjoy the heat, though, and I\u2019ve been feeling quite good so far. We get these temperatures during the Australian summer, so maybe we Aussies are more used to it than some. For me, the hotter it is, the better when it comes to recovery compared to others, so I\u2019m happy with this weather, and I hope it can last for a few more days. I\u2019m hoping that if this continues into next week and a few more of the boys get tired, then it could help me. When my opportunity comes, I\u2019ll be ready to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Grand Tours are a bit of a time black hole. Once you start one, any sense of time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-796669","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\/796669","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=796669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}