Tour de France: How Jonas Vingegaard may come to regret stage 12 chaos in yellow jersey race with Tadej Pogacar

The term ‘washing machine’ was thrown around quite a lot when referring to the peloton in the stage to Belleville-en-Beaujolais as top teams came to the front to control the race before being swarmed by another set of riders attempting to jump out and join the breakaway.

Among those out of control seemed Jumbo-Visma, who with Tiesj Benoot and Wout Van Aert desperate to join the lead riders and Sepp Kuss out the back for parts of the first 90 kilometres, inadvertently left yellow jersey wearer Jonas Vingegaard isolated at several points.

This opened a door for Tadej Pogacar who seized the opportunity and was never far behind the wheel of Vingegaard as the Dane worked hard to close any gaps with Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates waiting to pounce in case of emergency.

Jumbo-Visma super domestique Sepp Kuss said: “It’s like all the other days, GC (General Classification) guys attacking but I think we had it under control, we didn’t have all the guys up there in that first group, but I think we could still keep it under control pretty well.”

He then added that he wasn’t aware that Vingegaard was isolated because he wasn’t in the same group as the yellow jersey.

Despite Vingegaard looking under control throughout the day when comfortably closing gaps he may have needlessly wasted energy that could become useful in the remainder of the race while Pogacar remained conservative, saving energy in the slipstream of Vingegaard.

A day that was so chaotic allowed gaps to appear all over the peloton and if Vingegaard found himself the wrong side of a split he could have been in deep trouble trying to chase back in.

For example, going into the first categorised climb of the Cote de Thizy-les-Bourgs last year’s winner found himself two thirds of the way down the peloton following a smart move from wildcard team Uno-X that forced him the long way around a roundabout going into the category three climb.

Should attacks at the front of the group cause a split, the clear lack of organisation from the Dutch team Jumbo-Visma would have found them scrambling back to support Vingegaard back to the pack, by which point he may have already lost 30 seconds.

While no damage came from the team on this occasion it serves as a stark warning moving forward and a day they may come to regret should Vingegaard lose time in the future.

It turns out that Jumbo-Visma were not the only team left dazed by the high-paced first 80km as AG2R-Citroen and Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Team Ineos Grenadiers needlessly worked on the front for the final 70km to close the gap to the leading group, that now includes 10th placed Thibaut Pinot.

AG2R were the first to work on the front taking position at the front of the peloton with 63km remaining of the day as they began the ascent of the category three Col de la Casse Froide with limited impact as Mathieu van Dder Poel accelerated out of the lead group on the following climb.

The French team them proceeded to sit up 10km later to allow lead-man Ben O’Connor back into the group as the team’s Director Sportiff responded during the race by saying: “we’re trying to minimise the gap with the front and those in 10th-14th in the GC allowing us the opportunity to move up.”

Ultimately, the efforts of both teams had little affect as stage 12 winner Ion Izagirre still finished over four minutes ahead of both teams.