Sure, Vingegaard's level in the 2024 Tour was incredible really. But you can't compare Pogacar 2024 to Pogacar 2023 (or 2022) either.
Despite his much worse prep Vingegaard did his best ever watts on PdB - better than when he won the Tour. He executed that stage perfectly, but Pogacar was too good.
Jonas admitted after the Bonette stage that he was worse that day - and that will be due to lost prep and resulting lack of recovery. Lack of recovery shows in different ways. They can still bounce back. Vinegaard did by riding a strong TT in Nice (beating Remco).
This year Pogacar is fresher. I'm still tipping Pogacar to go back to back next month regardless what happens in the Dauphine. Maybe a 2 minute gap by Paris rather than the 6 minutes we saw in 2024. We will see.
		
		
	 
Best watts ever on PdB doesn't mean that much in the current era.
Due to clinic things, each year, the riders are improving a lot. Bernal is probably doing his best watts ever, but that doesn't mean he is being the version he could be in the last years, because the injuries he had, prevented him from being even more better.
We are in a moment of cycling where we have to be careful to what really means doing the best watts ever.
It is humanly impossible to do your best version of watts ever, when Vingegaard had the injuries he had in April. We are talking about 15 days in bed losing muscle mass, colapsed lungs,broken ribs, broken collarbone. He was limited because of the pneumotorax to breath during months, and for some reason he spent this winter recovering the muscle mass.
Obviously this means he wasn't the best version he could had be on PDB, even if he did his "best watts ever".
Like i said, my point is "best watts ever on PDB" is different from "
best watts ever you can do....in your best version ever".
Nevertheless, it was still a miracle.