Jonas Vingegaard crashed out of the Tour de France from second place overall as Remco Evenepoel won stage 15 ahead of race leader Tadej Pogacar atop Plateau de Solaison.<\/p>\n
Two-time Tour champion Vingegaard, Pogacar’s principal rival for yellow, went down hard on a tight roundabout approaching the final climb, around 20km from the end of the 184km stage from Champagnole, and climbed into an ambulance with a suspected broken collarbone.<\/p>\n
Vingegaard\u2019s exit saw Evenepoel promoted to second overall and the Belgian responded by claiming his first career road stage win on the Tour \u2013 his two previous successes having come in time trials.<\/p>\n
Vingegaard\u2019s crash came after the Dane was controversially woken up at 2am for an unannounced anti-doping test, with the Giro d\u2019Italia winner complaining about a loss of sleep in pre-stage interviews.<\/p>\n
Pogacar was himself tested at 5am but though he said he had been unable to get back to sleep afterwards, the Slovenian downplayed the impact it had on him as he joked pre-stage about listening to Eminem records and drinking coffee.<\/p>\n
But in his post-stage interview, Pogacar was quick to mention the anti-doping controls when asked about Vingegaard\u2019s crash.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s really really sad to see that Jonas is out,” Pogacar said. “Since 2021 we were always battling out for the victory. Maybe in the beginning we didn\u2019t have the best relationship but in the last two years we became good rivals and I also think friends. The Tour will not be the same without him.<\/p>\n
“It got me thinking\u2026 before today we had doping control at two in the morning. Maybe this is a reason, one night your sleep is ruined, maybe a little bit less concentration in the descent and then his Tour is ruined. I don\u2019t blame that but it could be a little bit connected.”<\/p>\n
On the steep gradients to the finish Pogacar was trying to set up a second stage win for his UAE Team Emirates-XRG team-mate Isaac del Toro.<\/p>\n
But, on terrain not normally suited to him, Evenepoel stuck to their wheels and responded to both of Del Toro\u2019s attacks inside the final kilometre to take the win just ahead of Pogacar as Del Toro faded.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s amazing,” Evenepoel said. “I\u2019m literally trembling from emotions. It\u2019s been a hell of a day. It was pretty hard at the start. I was feeling really bad in the beginning but I got better.<\/p>\n
“You have to understand I\u2019m racing with the best rider ever. He was doing a hell of a climb to try to win the stage with Isaac. For me it\u2019s a big step forward that I can follow this pace. It was a crazy hard pace\u2026<\/p>\n
“I get so many critics saying I cannot survive steep climbs and it feels amazing for myself and for everybody around me. It means a lot.”<\/p>\n
Evenepoel sits five minutes adrift of Pogacar going into Monday\u2019s rest day and then Tuesday\u2019s time trial \u2013 a day he would already have been targeting.<\/p>\n
Del Toro missed out on the stage but moved up to third, taking the best rider\u2019s young jersey from French teenager Paul Seixas, 25 seconds further back in fourth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jonas Vingegaard crashed out of the Tour de France from second place overall as Remco Evenepoel won stage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-557745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}