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The winners and losers of the second week of the Tour de France 2024
After a blistering first week of history-making, French breakaways and early-race GC splits, the 2024 Tour de France has marinated into its second week. Now 15 stages in, the race pauses to allow the riders to rest up before one final push to the line in Nice.
On its second rest day, Tadej Pogačar leads the overall classification with a 3:09 advantage over Jonas Vingegaard and a 5:19 buffer to Remco Evenepoel in third. Biniam Girmay continues to wear the green jersey, Tadej Pogačar is in the polka-dots (although, this will be worn in lieu by Jonas Vingegaard), and Remco Evenepoel has a firm grip on the white jersey.
Let’s look back on Stages 10 to 15 and draw some conclusions about the race. Who excelled in the middle section of the race, and who was left disappointed last week?
Winner: Tadej Pogačar
Of course, Tadej Pogačar leads this list. At the end of the first week, Pogačar had already prepared us for an impending GC strike in the mountains after having won the first mountain stage in Valloire.
In the second week, though, Pogačar has risen to the top of the GC standings with a three-minute gap to Jonas Vingegaard and a five-minute lead over Remco Evenepoel. Along the way, he claimed two stage wins and came close to another at Le Lioran on Stage 11.
There is no doubt that Pogačar is the strongest rider in the race. He has smashed climbing records (more on that to come) and dismantled the opposition with ease.
It would take a miracle comeback for anyone to overtake the Slovenian in his quest for a historic Giro-Tour double.
- Look out for Tadej’s race-leading Colnago V4Rs
Winner: Jasper Philipsen
The most improved rider of the week is undoubtedly Jasper Philipsen. After a disappointing first week, Jasper made it onto the losers section of last week’s review. Since then, he has improved greatly and has two stage wins to show for it.
The first of these wins came in Saint-Amand-Montrond courtesy of a perfect leadout from Mathieu van der Poel. After a low-key first week, the two finally managed to break through the sprinting chaos. Similarly on Stage 13 in Pau, Philipsen’s kick was unmatched by his rivals, paving the way to another stage win.
Although Philipsen does not top the green jersey rankings, he has made some inroads in that classification. The Belgian fastman now sits 86 points behind Biniam Girmay. To overhaul this deficit, his Alpecin-Deceuninck team will need to keep a tight leash in the breakaway during the remaining sprinting days and hope Girmay suffers some bad luck.
- Check out Jasper Philipsen’s unreleased Canyon Aeroad he won two stages on board
Winner: Climbing records
Whatever you think about climbing records, the Pyrenean KOMs have received a right hammering this weekend.
On Stage 15’s summit finish to Plateau de Beille, Pogačar smashed the time of Marco Pantani up the climb by 5min 47sec. Twitter user NaichacaCycling has calculated an estimated watts per kilo of 6.98 for this effort. For those unenlightened, 7W/kg is considered an all-time performance. On a climb of Plateau de Beille’s length, Pogačar’s effort sits among the greatest of all time.
The day before at Pla d’Adet, this calculation produced a watts per kilo score of 6.85. Pogačar’s 27min 50sec climb is two minutes faster than the time of Lance Armstrong in 2001, and far faster than any recent attempts on the climb. With such records, we have some confidence in saying that we are in a golden era of cycling performance.
Winner: Soudal-QuickStep
Soudal-QuickStep usually target the sprints at the Tour de France, but in 2024, the Belgian team have been leaving their mark in the GC.
After a solid week of racing, Remco Evenepoel has made substantial progress on his podium bid. The Belgian leader has placed himself solidly as the third-best rider in the race, now with a five-minute buffer to both Pogačar in the lead and João Almeida in fourth.
Elsewhere, Mikel Landa is back to his best. At Plateau de Beille, Landa performed above expectations to claim fourth place on the stage. That enabled the Basque rider to jump up to fifth in the overall standings, an improvement of three places from the first rest day.
Winner: The super-domestiques
The top ten of this year’s Tour de France features fewer teams than normal. This is due to the rise of the super-domestiques.
Apart from the aforementioned Mikel Landa, two teammates have stood out during this second week: Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates). Both riders suffered disappointing opening weeks. Yates sat in 12th at the last rest day and Jorgenson was in 10th. Through the second week, both have moved up the pecking order despite supporting their respective team leaders.
Yates gained some time back after a solid ride to Le Lioran, but made his most significant GC advances in the Pyrenees. Altogether, this has moved Yates, last year’s third-place finisher into seventh overall.
Jorgenson, on the other hand, has become Visma-Lease a Bike’s most reliable domestique in the mountains. Without Sepp Kuss, the Idaho-raised rider has yo-yoed on the fringes of top ten. In spite of the stacked startlist of out-and-out leaders, the super-domestiques have proven a steady force within the top ten of GC in this latter half of the Tour.
Loser: Primož Roglič
It wouldn’t be a Roglič Tour de France without a little bit of rough and tumble. Yes, there are no prizes for guessing that the Slovenian would feature on this list. Battered and bruised already, Roglič was handed a killer blow in the second week of racing. Out of the Tour for the third time in a row, it hurts to say that Roglič was a write-off in the second week.
His woes began on Stage 11 where he crashed on a hairpin with only a couple of kilometres to go. Able to finish the stage, we were led to believe that this was an innocent spell of typical Roglič clumsiness. However, the following day, Roglič would crash more heavily in a mass pileup during the approach to the sprint finale. His teammates would help to chase on, but the injuries picked up would be too severe for his Tour to continue.
Red Bull-Bora-Hangrohe narrowly escaped another inclusion in the losers’ section this week. The team’s two top guns in the GC – Roglič and Vlasov – have been forced to abandon, and stage-hunting fortunes have not blossomed so far.
Loser: The breakaway
Usually, the second week is prime breakaway territory. With the GC battle settled down, the escapees often make it all the way. However, the breakaways were far from lucky in the second week of racing of the 2024 Tour de France.
EF Education-EasyPost punched above their weight in the mountain breakaways, courtesy of Richard Carapaz and Ben Healy, and the more GC-bare squads have been in search of a vital win. Despite their efforts, no breakaway went all the way during the second week of racing. The GC favourites scooped up all the mountain stages and the sprinters swept up all the flat stages on offer.
With one week left, it’ll be up to UAE Team Emirates and Visma-Lease a Bike as to whether the breakaways will succeed.
Loser: GC tension
For the first time since the Vingegaard-Pogačar rivalry emerged in 2022, the GC tension between the two leaders seems to have fizzled out by the end of the second week. Despite the presence of Remco Evenepoel and Primož Roglič at this year’s Tour, the GC fight has been seemingly decided much sooner than before.
Pogacar’s attacks on the Plateau de Beille look at have put any GC tension to bed. To add, Pogačar has won all three high mountain stages so far (Stages 4, 14 and 15). He has proved that he is the strongest climber by far at this Tour de France. Similarly, UAE Team Emirates have proved that they are the strongest team in the mountains, even if Juan Ayuso abandoned halfway through the second week.
The only wobble so far came in the Massif Central where Jonas Vingegaard outgunned Pogačar in a final sprint to the line. However, since then, Pogačar has gained two minutes on the Dane, extending his lead out to a mammoth 3min 9sec in the GC. It will take a big effort from Visma-Lease a Bike to overturn that deficit.
Losers: Crashes and Illness
The 2024 Tour de France was largely unaffected by crashes and illness during its first week. However, this luck ran out during the second bloc of racing.
Crashes have reared their ugly head this week. Primož Roglič is the most high-profile casualty, while Bahrain’s Pello Bilbao and Fred Wright abandoned and timed out of the race respectively. In the sprint finale to Stage 13, Amaury Capiot and Maxim van Gils collided, causing a mass pileup against the barriers. Capiot eventually exited the race after trying to remain in the fight the day after.
The Tour de France has also been a hive of illness over the week. Juan Ayuso contracted Covid early in the week, forcing him to abandon. Likewise, Geraint Thomas has confirmed that he is struggling with Covid after his teammate Tom Pidcock was sent home after testing positive. Stage 9 winner Anthony Turgis has confirmed his Covid diagnosis and Cavendish’s leadout man Michael Mørkøv also retired from the Tour following a Covid diagnosis.
The Ineos leader Carlos Rodríguez described Covid as the ‘invisible rival’. Fingers crossed no other favourites fall ill in the final week of racing. In response, the Tour has reintroduced mask-wearing rules for race organisers, media and guests.
Losers: The ‘crisps man’
After Stage 14’s summit finish to Pla d’Adet, a new villain emerged at the Tour de France: ‘crisps man’.
With a Breton flag draped around his neck, this spectator waved his bag of crisps in the way of both Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard on the slopes of the Pyrenean mountain. Little did the spectator know that he was caught in HD on the TV broadcast.
Le Parisien reported that the man was arrested for ‘aggravated violence’ and faced questioning on Sunday. Witnesses on the climb say that the spectator was caught by police shortly after the lead riders came past.
The vandal was met with widespread negative reporting online and on social media. ‘There was quite a bit of booing and someone was throwing chips, I heard also they threw the chips at Tadej and that’s strange to do,’ Jonas Vingegaard recounts.
We hope that fewer snacks will be thrown on the riders during the final week of the race.
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