Not what I suggested at all. He followed Vingegaard and would assume the other two would as well. He checked that they weren't following and gauged his effort, not wanting to commit needlessly and fall back to the strategy others mention above: stick with Carapaz and Uran, his chief GC threats. That he would sprint for 25m at the end for a time bonus isn't any show of pointless strength. We are hyper-analyzing everything these guys do and, if you've been in a race like this you'd realize that they make probably 5 adjustments per minute in effort, tactics and awareness. Do you think Vingegaard believes he can now attack and drop Tadej at any time? Who else feels that way? We'll see what the DS's tell their riders but if there was a slight opportunity; it was very small and now it is long gone.So he basically jump on Vingegaard's wheel to make him work, and then dropped to Uran/Carapaz to make them work too, if I understood correctly. Although they would do that same amount of work even without his presence. How smart indeed
And he even gave Vingegaard a false sense of being stronger, brilliant!
Tadej at least has the ally he had in the past in JVM as they will be keen to preserve Vingegaard's podium. UAE can now let them chase, too. We'll see what the next move is and it will be.
If anyone wins the ego display award it was Alaphilippe. Attacking Quintana to deny him a single climbing point was purely for the cameras. His showboat pulls in the breakaway worked entirely in WvA favor and he ended up getting passed by everyone.