While the Uno-X Mobility camp popped the champagne Wednesday afternoon, the mood elsewhere was less celebratory. It is becoming apparent that it is not only fans at the roadside who are increasingly irked by the Pogacar and his team\u2019s dominance. Following Sunday\u2019s stage to Ussel won by Mathieu van der Poel, riders and team managers were at a loss to explain why UAE Team Emirates-XRG chased so closely behind the breakaway throughout a stage that had no bearing on the battle for the yellow jersey.<\/p>\n
Frenchman Alex Baudin (EF Education-EasyPost), who was in the four-man group that contested Sunday\u2019s stage win, said: \u201cI\u2019m actually glad the breakaway made it to the finish, because I really didn\u2019t understand why UAE was chasing.\u201d His compatriot Nicolas Prodhomme (Decathlon CMA CGM) declared: \u201cIt was crazy all day long. UAE rode hard to keep the gap at a minute or a minute-forty… I didn\u2019t quite understand why.\u201d<\/p>\n
Movistar\u2019s sports director Jos\u00e9 Joaqu\u00edn Rojas was of a similar mind, saying that: \u201cultimately, it spoils part of the spectacle when the result is already practically a foregone conclusion.\u201d He added that his take on the \u201cabsurd\u201d tactic was shared by \u201c85 per cent of other sports directors\u201d.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Monday\u2019s rest day in the Domestique Hotseat podcast, Danish rider Michael Valgren (EF Education-EasyPost) suggested that Pogacar\u2019s dominance ultimately stemmed from a grudge against his long-time rival Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike). \u201cHe wants to put him in a coffin, at least mentally\u2026 I think they\u2019re going to go all out and try to bury Jonas once more, to really cook him mentally,\u201d Valgren said.<\/p>\n
The Dane predicted, accurately as it turned out, that Pogacar would be determined to avenge his defeat by Vingegaard at Le Lioran in 2024. \u201cIt\u2019s almost as if Pogacar is thinking: \u2018This was the last time he beat me, but now I\u2019m going to beat him even more emphatically.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
There has been widespread criticism in the media too. After condemning the booing of Pogacar, Raymond Kerckhoffs of WielerFlits magazine lamented his team\u2019s strategy, saying: \u201cI find it incomprehensible that UAE Team Emirates-XRG isn\u2019t giving the harmless early breakaway any breathing space in the transition stages.\u201d<\/p>\n
When fans reject dominance<\/p>\n
This kind of antipathy towards the era\u2019s all-conquering champion has been seen many times before. In 1930, Italy\u2019s Alfredo Binda was paid by the organising newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport to miss his national tour after winning four of the five previous editions. In 1975, five-time Tour winner Eddy Merckx was punched in the kidneys by a fan as he neared the summit of the Puy de D\u00f4me climb. Although the Belgian retained the yellow jersey that evening, he lost it the next day and never wore it again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the Uno-X Mobility camp popped the champagne Wednesday afternoon, the mood elsewhere was less celebratory. It is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,217,101,5438,6549,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-694198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-standard","tag-tour-de-france","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}