Tadej’s dominance in the Pyrenees continued on stage 15 of the Tour, although the Visma Lease a Bike riders took the initiative on the 197.7 km long test with almost 5,000 meters of elevation gain. At the head of the group of favorites, they dictated the pace all the way to the final climb to the Plateau de Beille, where Jonas Vingegaard attacked 10.5 km before the finish line.
Tadej first followed his escalating pace, then accelerated 5.3 km before the top and drove himself to his second consecutive victory. “I didn’t imagine the situation would be so good after two weeks of the Tour. An extremely demanding day is behind us, I have had problems with high temperatures before, but our team took care of cooling during the stage extremely well. It was an incredible day for us,” Tadej was delighted with the outcome.
He celebrated his third victory on this year’s Tour and the 14th of his career, in which he has already achieved a total of 80 victories in five and a half seasons in the professional peloton. However, the most important thing this time was that he significantly increased his lead over his pursuers in the overall standings of the 111th Tour de France. He wears the yellow jersey 3:09 ahead of Vingegaard and 5:19 ahead of Remco Evenepoel before the second rest day.
“I was already very happy when I was leading by 1:14, but now the advantage is much more comfortable. We have six more days to go. We have to keep the same mindset going into next week. Anyway, I’m looking forward to the day off, the boys and I will go for a nice ride and stop for a good coffee. We have to reset our minds a bit, not think about racing, but not too much. The last week will be full gas,” added Tadej after his 17th victory this year.
He is well on his way to adding the yellow jersey on the Tour to the pink jersey he won at the Giro in May. But he won’t celebrate the final Tour victory prematurely. He is aware that he still has six stages ahead of him, and the last three in the hinterland of the Côte d’Azur, where he expects many Slovenian fans, will be particularly demanding.