Dominant Pogacar wins on summit finish to regain Tour lead

Tadej Pogacar regained the overall lead of the Tour de France as he stormed up the Hautacam climb to win stage 12.

Jonas Vingegaard’s Visma-Lease a Bike team were expected to attack the reigning champion on the first true mountain stage of this year’s Tour, which ended with the first summit finish.

Pogacar was also sporting dressings on his left arm after falling at the end of Wednesday’s stage, but the Slovenian showed no ill effects as he attacked on the gruelling final climb.

The three-time winner went clear early on the 13.5km ascent and continued to stretch his lead, winning the stage by two minutes 10 seconds from Vingegaard.

That meant he reclaimed the yellow jersey from Ben Healy and more than doubled his time advantage over Vingegaard, his main rival for the general classification, who is now 3 mins 31 secs behind.

It was on this climb that Vingegaard struck the decisive blow on the 2022 Tour, taking a minute out of Pogacar as the Dane won stage 18 en route to clinching his first Tour title.

“I was trying with my head through the wall to get back the yellow jersey [in 2022] but Visma was too strong back then,” said Pogacar.

“I almost forgot about that. I was just looking forward to today, then all the people, all the time were, coming to me saying ‘oh yeah, this is the revenge time’, blah blah blah.

“Then when we approached the bottom of the climb it was the reverse story of a few years ago. One Belgian guy again on the front, Tim [Wellens], and our team. I’m super happy to take time [out of Vingegaard] and win on this climb.”