Blazin’ Saddles: Tadej Pogacar will win, but what else will be decided in final week of the Tour de France?

Since Tadej Pogacar took over the race lead at the end of Stage 8 at Le-Grand-Bornand there has been an air of inevitability that the yellow jersey battle had already been put to bed. With his main rival watching from home, Ineos Grenadiers failing to click, and the gulf between the defending champion and the second-tier of GC riders all so apparent, Pogacar has been able to ride this Tour largely on auto-pilot and without the need of much team support.

The Slovenian’s only wobble – on the second of two ascents of Mont Ventoux, when Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard put him in the red near the summit – resulted in a strengthening of his GC position after Ben O’Connor, the winner of Stage 9 to Tignes, dropped away to see Pogacar’s gap at the top grow to 5’18”.

Rigoberto Uran, Pogacar's closest challenger, seems content to defend his second place, which would give him another runner-up spot in Paris four years after the first – mirroring his two second-place finishes earlier in his career in the Giro (making the Colombian just as much an ‘Eternal Second’ on Grand Tours as Raymond Poulidor).

A tough battle for second, however, sees Vingegaard, Richard Carapaz, O’Connor and Wilco Kelderman all lurking within one minute of Uran ahead of the final phase of the week – ensuring that the identity of those flanking Pogacar on the podium in Paris remains very much in the balance. So, too, does the polka dot jersey battle – which has four riders all within 10 points at the top – while Mark Cavendish, should be survive the Pyrenees, still isn’t guaranteed the green jersey just yet.

With three more stages in the mountains, two more summit finishes, two more sprints, a time trial, and a maximum 145 KOM points and 290 green jersey points up for grabs – there should still be thrills and spills aplenty in the Tour’s final week. Just not in the competition which defines the race and which made the conclusion of last year's so compelling.

Of course, he can. But he won’t. The 22-year-old didn’t need any teammates last year when he secured the yellow jersey at the eleventh hour – and nor will he need any this year. Certainly not – as the joke goes – while Ineos Grenadiers are doing such a sterling job for him.

The British team managed to isolate Pogacar before the Port d’Envalira climb on Sunday after Richie Porte, Geraint Thomas and Michal Kwiatkowski combined. And when Dylan van Baarle was called back from the break with Jonathan Castroviejo, you sensed that Ineos were about to pull the trigger. But it was a starting pistol and not a lethal weapon which fired: Carapaz tried his luck on the Col de Beixalis, but Pogacar could not be shaken off.

Increasingly you get the impression that Ineos are riding to dislodge those riders standing between Carapaz and a place on the podium – and not for any ostensible yellow jersey ambitions. That ship has clearly sailed.

The very fact that Sunday’s large breakaway featured the likes of Steven Kriujswijk, Dan Martin, Vincenzo Nibali, Julian Alaphilippe, Alejandro Valverde and Nairo Quintana – in short, riders you more readily associate with a GC battle rather than an opportunistic skirmish – highlights how immovable Pogacar seems to be atop cycling’s current food chain.

Two summit finishes in the final week will at least test Pogacar in a way he hasn’t yet been tested, but the Slovenian has the luxury of the penultimate day’s 30.8km time trial. That in itself represents almost as large a cushion as the five minutes he already holds over his rivals. Pogacar’s only victory so far has come in the previous TT – and we saw how he performed in last year’s deciding race against the clock.

Take Pogacar out of the equation and you would have a race still very much on a knife-edge with Uran 14 seconds clear of Vingegaard and 15 seconds clear of Carapaz. O’Connor is at 40 seconds and Kelderman at 58 seconds. Behind, around another minute back, Alexey Lutsenko, Enric Mas and Guillaume Martin are all within a minute of each other, while Pello Bilbao – in tenth place – is perhaps the only rider besides Pogacar with the luxury of a handful of minutes on his nearest challenger.

Interestingly, the top 11 places on GC are occupied by riders from different teams; you have to go back to 1970 for a Tour where the final top 10 comprised riders from 10 different teams. What that tells you, perhaps, is how some of the stronger teams have struggled to assert their authority on the race. It’s also a reflection on the attrition rate of this year’s Tour, which has seen 37 riders withdraw and numerous big names suffer because of crashes.

For instance, had Primoz Roglic and Geraint Thomas not been involved in early falls, you’d have expected both riders to be up in the top 10 – whereby giving Ineos and Jumbo-Visma two representatives which, in turn, may have contributed to a narrower lead for the man in yellow.

Given his pedigree and the resources at his disposal at Ineos, you would expect Carapaz to ride into second place off the back of the two Pyrenean summit finishes on the Col du Portet and at Luz Ardiden. But he’ll need a buffer over Uran to keep the EF Education-Nippo rider down during the TT.

Jumbo-Visma’s Vingegaard remains an unknown quantity at this level. This is his first Grand Tour and he’s ridden exceptionally well – often while entirely isolated, given Jumbo-Visma's dwindling resources – but the third week, and those mountaintop finales, could be his comeuppance, even if it’s the 24-year-old Dane, rather than his more experienced rivals, who seems to have caused Pogacar the most damage to date.

The rest of the top 10, though, are clearly riding to stay where they are or – in the case of Movistar’s Mas – to rise up into the top five. In terms of spectacle, we can probably expect more from the riders further down in the standings who are targeting the polka dot jersey…

If the sight of Michael Woods and Wout Poels duking it out in the foothills of the Pyrenees on Saturday was entertaining, then Stage 15 proved a delight with the same two riders resuming their uphill duel along with Nairo Quintana re-entering the fold and Wout van Aert getting in the mix.

Dutchman Poels (Bahrain-Victorious) put himself back into the polka dot jersey with an eight-point gap over Canada’s Woods (Israel Start-Up Nation) after Colombia’s Quintana (Arkea-Samsic) bounced back by taking maximum points over the highest point in this Tour, the Port d’Envalira. Belgian champion Van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) also showed an appetite by joining Quintana on 64 points – keeping the door open for a potential polka dot push following his victory over the two ascents of Ventoux.

Four riders – all out of the GC picture – and within 10 points of each other represents the kind of competition we all wish we could see for the yellow jersey. It will be interesting to see how the tactics play out: Tuesday’s Stage 16 features four climbs but only 21 points so there’s sense in keeping the legs fresh for the next two stages which boast 60 and 62 points respectively.

But by the same token, picking up points while you can – and in the knowledge that the GC battle could nullify the two summit finishes – could be a shrewd move. And any break that gets away on Tuesday could well be bolstered by the likes of Sonny Colbrelli and Michael Matthews in their shared quest to keep the green jersey battle alive…

Thanks to his four victories in a quite remarkable comeback race, Mark Cavendish (Deceuninck-QuickStep) is less than a week away from taking the green jersey into Paris where, should he not manage it on Friday – the first of two remaining flat stages – he’ll have a golden opportunity to become the all-time leading stage winner in Tour history.

Cavendish has 279 points in the green jersey standings – 72 points clear of his nearest rival, Matthews of Team BikeExchange. Alpecin-Fenix’s Jasper Philipsen, arguably the fastest remaining sprint rival for Cavendish is 105 points down while Italian champion Colbrelli (Bahrain-Victorious) is 120 points down in fourth.

While it’s therefore not as tight as the polka dot battle, there’s still a lot that could change – not least because of the daily battle to beat the time-cut that Cavendish will no doubt face in the Pyrenees. While his rivals may look to get into breaks and pick up intermediate points – and, indeed, points at the finish, as Colbrelli did by finishing third at Tignes – Cav will be surrounded by teammates and keeping his eye on the clock.

There’s still a maximum 290 points up for grabs in the green jersey competition. Take off the points available on the summit finishes and the TT and you’re left with 230 points – of which, given his track record, Cav can expect to take the maximum 50 each from the remaining flat stages. That leaves just 130 points – largely in the intermediate sprints – where the Manx Missile’s rivals can make a difference.

Cavendish not winning green now would be almost as unlikely as Pogacar failing to keep hold of yellow – but there’s a greater chance that Cav doesn’t make it to Paris than Pog slipping up. Should that be the case, the mountains will be the reason, which in turn would make the wait for that elusive single stage win to pull clear of Eddy Merckx go on until 2022 and perhaps indefinitely.

Stages which follow rest days can always throw up the odd curveball, and while Tuesday’s 169km ride back into France from Andorra may not feature the hardest of climbs, four long descents could create problems on the road to Saint-Gaudens – and there are always those riders who react badly to a day off racing, especially after two weeks in the saddle.

Wednesday’s stage to Saint-Lary will take place against a backdrop of Bastille Day and so we’ll have a battle from the race’s remaining French riders as well as those in the GC picture. After the Peyresourde and Col de Val Louron-Azet, a finish on the Col du Portet, the highest paved pass in the French Pyrenees, should be a spectacle and, if we don’t see Pogacar tested, then at least we should be able to marvel at his breath-taking climbing ability.

The final day in the mountains features the crowd-pleasing Col du Tourmalet ahead of the grind to Luz Ardiden, where Lance Armstrong famously fought back after catching his handlebars on a kid’s bag and hitting the deck in 2003.

A long day past the vineyards of the Gironde will act as a backdrop to the first chapter of Cavendish’s assault on Merckx’s record, while the “wine trial” a day later around Saint-Emilion should decide the final top 10 placings while giving Pogacar a chance to make it a hat-trick of stage wins (on the assumption that the Slovenian showman will win one of the summit finishes).

Then it’s Paris – and if not Cavendish winning in green to break that record, then how about the prospect of his old friend Andre Greipel rolling back the years with a win? After all, the German veteran’s last two Tour victories – in 2016 and 2015 – did occur on the Champs-Elysées. That or Wout van Aert capping another strong individual Tour by completing the little-seen Ventoux-Paris double…