Pogacar is simply on another level, it's going to be difficult for anyone to beat him.

Unless Vingegaard is unleashed, of course, he just keeps impressing me, a future GC rider for sure.

Impressive by MvdP, too. He hasn't been much of a time trialist in the past.

Incredible ride from Pogacar but also van der Poel who doesn't even own a TT bike since he has no time to train on it anyway. Also Roglic did super well cosidering his injuries.

Apparently they found Waldo.

Woman who caused Tour de France crash in custody

Pogacar is just unbelievable. Incredible. Hard to believe a rider can be that good on both a flat course and on a mountain time trial.

Ton of heart shown by MvdP, worthy of another day in yellow.

I don't get it though - a guy that can only get 3rd in the national time trialing champs and blows all his opponents away in the first itt in the tour??

Simply a 22 yo guy peaking all year long, on all terrain, without a day off since he is on a bike. Nothing to see here.

Expert followers in France pretty disgruntled fwiw- back to the 90s/00s clownshow.

In positive news, there should now be fireworks since Ineos/Jumbo have nothing to lose and a better team- on paper. Friday with 250kms and a tricky finish could be a superb mess

Maybe he's channeling Armstrong.

It's definitely very suspicious, I'm of the opinion that doping is still common in the peloton, it's just not in anybody's interest that it gets out, so we're not going to hear about it until some relatively unremarkable riders will need something spicy to sell their memoirs in some years. The doping doctors are so clearly ahead of those who try to detect them, and surely some riders will want to use that for an advantage (or to even things out) if they can.

That said, one could play the devil's advocate and claim that yesterday's result was also in the context of the usual top time trialists underperforming. WvA is clearly not at his best, he hasn't been near a stage win yet even though realistically every single one of them was the type he could win on his best days.

Küng finished second, but he only beat a small climber like Vingegaard, who's never done anything impressive in a TT, by 8 seconds. In isolation, Vingegaard finishing 3rd is a far more improbable result than Pogacar winning.

It's not that unheard of for the best climber to also be the best time trialist present, we've seen it with Froome, Roglic and Dumoulin in recent years. Evenepoel was in the same vein prior to his injury.

I think a lot of the usual TT suspects have an eye on the Olympics (while praying Ganna gets sick or something), and they're not in peak form right now, or the result would have looked differently. Some were also struggling due to weather conditions changing, for instance it was terrible when Bissegger was out but perfect for Pogacar. We've also had 4 days of very chaotic and quite intense racing, which will also be an advantage for GC type guys who typically recuperate better than the rest (naturally or not), while also not having to work for their teams to catch the breaks, which some TT guys have to.

Pogacar is a lock to be doped, unfortunately, I wonder how early the doctors started experimenting on the kid.

on top of the Watts data making no sense, the peak lasting all year etc, you have all the circumstantial stuff such as 50%+ of all Slovenian riders have been implicated in doping. The whole UAE team, i.e. coaches, doctors, the structure, have been convicted of doping in all the previous teams where they were employed. These people are nuclear and should be banned from coming anywhere near riders, yet they stay in charge and keep making the sport a farce.

I mean it’s not only Pogi, don’t get me wrong. + he is extremely talented, probably the best itw. Even Julian wouldn’t be so strong if he had stayed in a French team instead of being with Dr Pat Lefevere.It’s just that I’ve grown up following cycling in the 90s so I have been enjoying cycling for many years with some restraint (except the Armstrong years which were painful), but these days it is simply tough to enjoy.

Count me in the camp of people who do manage to enjoy it

I guess I still do heh. And I probably enjoy complaining too.

I just assume that most if not all of them are doping to some extent and mostly ignore it to enjoy the race. I have to say though that Padun's back to back stage wins in the Dauphine might be even more suspicious than Pogacar winning this ITT while looking quite comfortable in the end.

Yea Pogacar is pretty consistent actually with last year's TT (he also beat roglic the year before in the national TT)

Padun went full Rasmussen randomly for 2 stages

I'll give it less than 2 years that Pogacar will be outed as another Ricco.

consistently supernatural

Padun was lol yeah, though at least Bahrain didn’t bring him to the Tour to avoid possible repercussions.

Pretty much agree with this. Anti-doping enforcement is incredibly difficult under the best of circumstances and currently dopers are likely to have the upper hand. There are some inconsistencies in terms of which organizations are better at it, but there is no reason to be naive and think that big swathes of pro cyclists are completely clean.

It's not like Pogacar lost to some complete scrubs in the Slovenian TT, it was Tratnik's third win and Polanc won in 2017. Pogacar won in 2020 and 2019 and was runner up in 2018.

Absolutely incredible. He would probably reach 50 if not for his illness. I think he's the GOAT sprinter.

Happy for Cav but I can't help but feel like Merlier might actually be the fastest sprinter here and got relegated to leadout duty because Alpecin just really wants to give Philipsen a win.

LFG CAV

On the topic of doping and today's win I must say it is kind of strange that after 7 to 8 years in the boonies he all of a sudden looks to be the odds on for a green jersey again.

I'm kinda new to following cycling so I don't really understand the baseline for current doping talk but almost 3/4 of the comments I read yesterday were throwing shade on the TT results from yesterday.

Thought this was really cool. (Don't see too many reddit links here, I assume it's fine)

https://www.reddit.com/r/tourdefranc...021_routes_by/

It's somehow vaguely amusing that the guy wearing the King of the Mountains jersey is DFL in the GC.

HYPE for today

Breakaway should remain away but it is the perfect stage for Michael Matthews but BikeExchange have to push the pace early to make sure Cavendish is dropped early.

There's absolutely no chance that Cavendish is winning today.