Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar light up Tour de France but cannot escape memories of doping

Where there is elite sport, there is the possibility of cheating, and in an event like the Tour de France the spectre of doping is rarely far from the surface.

Until earlier this week pre-race favourites Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar had provided one of the most gripping battles for the Tour’s yellow jersey in decades.

Despite repeated violent attacks from two-time winner Pogacar during last weekend’s mountain stages, defending champion Vingegaard parried away his sparring partner’s jabs as if swatting flies. Just 10 seconds separated them going into Monday’s rest day following 2,613.5km (1,624 miles) of racing. After Tuesday’s stage, though, the race had been turned on its head.

D’une autre planète (from another planet) splashed L’Équipe the morning after Vingegaard had eviscerated Pogacar – and the rest of the peloton – over the relatively short 22.4-kilometre hilly time trial course, as seen in the clip below.

The 1min 38sec gained by Vingegaard not only raised a few eyebrows among some cycling fans, but of sub-editors at the esteemed French publication too.

Wednesday’s headline brought back memories of a similar front page from 1999 when Lance Armstrong sealed the first of the seven Tours he was later stripped of for doping.

The day after Vingegaard had all but buried Pogacar’s hopes for another year, the quiet Dane gained just shy of six minutes on the Slovenian to extend his advantage to 7min 35sec.

It will surprise few to discover that over the subsequent days Vingegaard’s team, Dutch squad Jimbo-Visma, has been fielding questions over the probity of these performances. “I understand that it’s hard to trust in cycling with the past there has been,” Vingegaard said on Wednesday.

Until the last few years, a Tour champion’s average age was around 28. Egan Bernal (22), Pogacar (21) and Vingegaard (25) have all bucked that trend since 2019.

Where once power meters were the preserve of senior professionals, the growing prevalence of these among the junior ranks – along with a greater understanding of how to train more efficiently – has resulted in a dramatic levelling of the playing field. Likewise, the use of glucose monitors during training along with fitness trackers that help manage sleep and recovery are understood to have been game changers.

Perhaps of more relevance, according to some experts, was a recent study that found endurance athletes’ tolerance for consuming carbohydrates was considerably higher – 120 grams of per hour – than previously thought.

It was fuelling, or the lack of, that put paid to Pogacar’s race following his dramatic collapse on the road to Courchevel on Wednesday. “He was simply really tired, and he had a bad day in the digest situation,” UAE Team Emirates sports director Andrej Hauptman told cyclingnews.com this week. “He tried to eat but he wasn’t able to eat a lot. And after that he was pretty empty in the final.”

For those who believe the sport is the cleanest it has been in years, the sight of a two-time winner bonking – the term given to a cyclist whose glycogen levels have depleted – will have encouraged them.

So, is the peloton still doping? The simple answer is: we do not know. While it would be easy to point an accusatory finger in the direction of Vingegaard, unless presented with any hard evidence, of which there is none, then we must base our opinions on facts.

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