Things that haven't changed
1. Pogačar - Pogod (Pogačar as a god)
2. Jonas - The early struggles are for week 3
He'll build his form up to peak in week 3
There was definitely a day where Pogačar lost a lot of time (though there hasn't been one since 2024...)
3. Remco - whining
4. Juan Ayuso - internal team leadership conflict
5. Sepp Kuss/Jorgenson - just riding the Tour
*What has changed
1. IDT (Isaac del Toro) - an unselfish number 2
2. Paul Seixas - a victim of the media's excessive expectations
3. Lipowitz - I'm the team's no. 1!!!
If I were to write my thoughts on yesterday's Stage 6
Visma got hit by almost exactly the same attack they suffered in Stage 4 of 2024, and even knowing it was coming, they just took it
2024 Stage 4 course layout - uphill - downhill - flat finish
2026 Stage 6 course layout - uphill - downhill - long gradual uphill finish
In 2024, at the top of the first climb Jonas lost about 8 seconds, and the gap grew on the downhill + flat, ending with a loss of about 1 minute 30 seconds
In 2026, at the top of the first climb he lost 30 seconds, about 1 minute on the downhill, and about 1 minute 10 seconds on the 17km 4% long gradual uphill, for a total loss of 2 minutes 38 seconds
He himself must have known he'd lose time on the downhill, because he pushed himself trying to stay glued to Pogačar with a steady tempo as much as possible, but it just didn't work
He spent too much energy on the first climb, so from the downhill all the way to the long climb that's supposed to be his strength, he kept getting dropped by Pogačar
Watching that doper Lance's talk show, apparently Pogačar did 6.7 w/kg for 42 minutes yesterday, and the funny thing is Jonas was even higher at 6.8 for the same 42 minutes!!! Well, as for the accuracy^^
Even on a course that included the high heat / long climbs that Visma always talked about as Pogačar's weakness, and it still came to this....
Of course you could argue that the final climb wasn't a long climb with real gradient, but the earlier first climb was a long climb with gradient and in the high-heat conditions cited as Pogačar's weakness, and yet the one who got dropped was Jonas!!!!
And Jonas's biggest problem (?) is that last year he built up muscle so he could handle Pogačar's sprints to some degree, but he must have decided that hurt his ITT and his own
strength of long climbs, so this year it seems he shifted his focus to steady tempo, and maybe that's what led to yesterday's disaster of getting dropped by del Toro's seated attack!!! Of course del Toro was going full power seated too.....but to get dropped there!!! Last year Pogačar only got dropped when Návez launched him like a sprinter's leadout!!
Pogačar's biggest mistake yesterday was that he could have opened up more of a gap early on in order to bring Isaac del Toro along, but he kept the gap to around 8 seconds.. If Isaac del Toro had pulled as much as possible and Pogačar had launched without holding back, the gap at the top of the first climb yesterday would have been way more than 30 seconds
Well, Visma needs to bring in a real climbing domestique instead of guys like Sepp Kuss or Jorgenson who are no help at the decisive moment, if they want to have any chance against UAE
Even if Jonas sets new max power records and works his hardest, he keeps getting beaten on team strength, so it seems more and more hopeless. They should develop Piganzoli well and bring in another climbing domestique..... or sign Paul Seixas, whose contract ends this year, and go with a double-ace strategy... to pressure UAE!!!
Visma's original strategy was to push up the climb with a team train so that UAE's helper riders couldn't stay by Pogačar's side and got dropped, then a few km from the top Sepp Kuss would pull Jonas, leaving only Pogačar clinging on alone behind, and Sepp Kuss's steady tempo would wear Pogačar down, then Jonas would attack!! He'd hold on for a bit, and once Pogačar melted in the heat and hit "I'm gone, I'm dead," Jonas would fly off!! But now it's the opposite, so they must be bewildered.
The thing I understood the least yesterday was that on the downhill they merged and closed the gap to Jonas to nearly 30 seconds — the Remco group had Bora - Remco/Lipowitz, Lidl-Trek - Ayuso/Skjelmose, so why didn't they all join forces and pull like crazy.... Sepp Kuss and del Toro obviously wouldn't take turns, and Paul Seixas at least didn't show any selfishness, but did the 2 riders from those 2 teams each think they were the GC leader themselves.....
And I think the media's expectations for Paul Seixas were excessive. Right now it seems he'd have a hard time even getting close to Jonas. Once he gains experience and time passes he'll probably be amazing, but I wonder if he really needed to ride the Tour this year.... I don't get the view that because he stuck with Pogačar for a brief moment in one-day races like Liège or Strade Bianche, he has potential in a 3-week grand tour!!! But Pogačar too, in the 2020 Tour he entered at age 21, won a stage but also had the experience of not being able to follow Roglič's attack on the queen stage (though the time gap was minimal), and even though it's the Tour de France, so much time has passed that you can't even remember when a Frenchman last won, so the expectations are natural, but I worry whether a young 19-year-old has the mentality to handle those expectations + pressure and the criticism when the results don't match the hype.
Anyway, it seems nothing much will happen until the ITT stage (stage 16) (right, Pogačar??) and in the uphill ITT stage Jonas might lose another 30 seconds to 1 minute, and Remco and Jonas could swap into 2nd and 3rd place. Remco is weak at uphill ITTs, but they say he lost weight lol
As an aside, Remco dropped 4kg and did seclusion training, which got everyone really hyped, but Remco is still Remco!! If just raising w/kg were everything, all the teams would do it!! Anyway, it seems Remco should stake everything on the fight for 3rd place. Oh! First, sort out the pecking order within his team!!!
