By now you’ve already read the news or watched it live, but yesterday’s stage was one for the history books. All the incessant talk about Pogacar being indestructible, unbeatable, etc. was put to rest for good on the slopes of the Col du Granon yesterday (last used in 1986, when Bernard Hinault also lost his yellow jersey…forever), when Pog finally had a good ol’ fringale and Jonas Vingegaard easily took the maillot jaune from him. He also took nearly 3 minutes on him, giving himself a 2 minute lead in the GC now.

We all love Pog, but I personally could not get enough of the relentless attacks that Roglic and Vingegaard put into him on the early slopes of the Galibier. They had the team and two guys too close to the GC lead for Pog to let either of them loose. It was perfect team tactics and they stuck to it till it worked.

To his credit, Pogacar answered nearly every attack convincingly and actually dug in at least one himself to see if sometimes the best defense is a good offense. It wasn’t yesterday, but it was admirable to see.

Pog will be back, there’s no question about that, but Jumbo Visma is a superior team (and they are still at full strength, I think), so it’ll be interesting to see how that will play out. Maybe he’ll find some allies near him in GC (Bardet, Thomas, Quintana), but I doubt anyone would like to haul Pog back to within sniffing distance of the top.

Whatever it is, somehow the Tour de France always finds a way to entertain us.