Tadej Pogacar leads Tour de France stage amid team illness concerns

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The 127.9km mountain stage starts at 2pm CEST / 1pm BST Stage 18 report | share your thoughts with Tom via email On the face of it Tadej Pogacar going into a marque mountain stage with a four and a half minute lead would mean only one thing but the extent of the illness sweeping through the UAE Team Emirates XRG camp is becoming hilariously muddled, with staff are saying things only to be contradicted by those on the bikes. Most notably Tim Wellens, who only just finished stage 18 inside the time cut before telling reporters that the riders ate alone in their rooms the previous night and that it was “pretty clear there is some illness in the team”. That much was evident from Adam Yates’ visible struggles over the past few days and the abandonment of Brandon McNulty on the road to Orcières-Merlette. McNulty, who looked awful during the pre-stage presentation in Voiron, had to climb off his bike, cut drift and alone after 50km. Unless Pogacar himself is seriously ill this will not change the calculus of the general classification too much. Even without his usual cohort of high quality lieutenants the Slovenian is more than capable of seeing this through the final few stages and his rivals are not exactly paragons of strength either. However, it had been assumed that Pogacar would be attacking the first of two assaults on Alpe d’Huez. The first, today, is a short 127km stage that goes uphill from kilometre zero and appeared primed for Pogacar to go after Marco Pantani’s record time for an ascent of the famous mountain. He may well still go for it, but that certainly seems riskier without a fully functioning team around him. Continue reading...

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Richard Carapaz roars clear of breakaway to win stage 18 McNulty abandons, Wellens and Vermeersch struggle Richard Carapaz won stage 18 of the Tour de France after a breakaway group of six riders duelled their way to the winter sports station at Orcières-Merlette, but uncertainty surrounds the health of race leader Tadej Pogacar’s UAE Emirates XRG team, which has been swept by a virus since Monday’s rest day. After Adam Yates’s stage-long calvary on the road to Voiron, Pogacar’s team was further weakened by the abandonment of his American colleague, Brandon McNulty, who quit the Tour with 21km of Thursday’s stage remaining. Continue reading...