Tadej Pogacar shrugged off the boo-boys and powered to victory on France’s national holiday with another dominant display at yesterday’s mountainous 10th stage to extend his overall lead at the Tour de France.
World champion Pogacar won his third stage at this year’s Tour and for the third time on Bastille Day to extend his lead over Jonas Vingegaard to more than three and a half minutes.
It is the largest gap Pogacar has ever had over his rivals at this stage of the race.
It was also the four-time champion’s 24th stage victory at the Tour, moving him to within one win of Frenchman Andre Leducq who twice won the Tour in the 1930s – in fourth in that list.
And even some jeers from the side of the road did not detract from his enjoyment.
The reigning champion attacked 15.5km from the finish of the 166.6km stage in the Cantal mountains and quickly opened up a decisive lead.
Behind him, the battle was for the minor placings both on the day and in the overall standings.
Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel dug in to finish second on the day, 32sec behind Pogacar, with French teenage hope Paul Seixas pipping Florian Lipowitz to third place two seconds later.
Vingegaard wilted on the uphill drag to the finish line and came home seventh at 44sec.
He is now 3min 36sec behind Pogacar with Evenepoel climbing to third overall another 30sec back.
Pogacar’s teammate Isaac Del Toro was the biggest loser on the day, dropping from third to seventh overall after finishing the stage eighth at 1min 31sec.
By the foot of the descent, Pogacar had a lead of around 16sec on the chasers, but he was simply too strong for them to close that and even eked out more time to the finish.
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