Tadej Pogacar survived all the attacks from Visma | Lease a Bike on Monday’s Tour de France stage to Le Mont-Dore. With major rival Jonas Vingegaard on his wheel, the Slovenian world champion ultimately crossed the finish line first. Afterwards, Pogacar described Visma | Lease a Bike’s attacks in Slovenian media as ‘annoying’.
"Yes, Visma was a bit annoying with all those attacks," Pogacar told RTV Slovenija. "So I decided to launch a better attack myself. The goal on Monday was to prevent Visma from attacking or to counter their attacks. I think we did that brilliantly."
Pogacar did lose the yellow jersey to Ben Healy, but the three-time Tour winner doesn’t seem too bothered by it. "Of course, it’s not easy to give up the yellow jersey, but we lost Joao Almeida on Sunday and Pavel Sivakov is still recovering from illness."
"Honestly, not having the yellow jersey now is fine. To be honest, I’m also a bit relieved not to have to keep talking to journalists all the time," he concluded.
