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Tour de France Tour de France 2021, Stage 9: Cluses – Tignes, 144.9 km

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Pogacar a level above everyone else in this Tour, but the competition is very weak. Nibali in a similar position with other top 2 favorites out in 2014 looked similarly dominant. 4 stage wins, 7-minute+ time gap. He certainly could have put more time on rivals with earlier attacks. If Contador or Froome had been the one left with the other two crashed out, might have seen an even larger discrepancy between leader and chasers. Pogacar legendary for sure but not ready to say he’s above peak Froome and Contador. In-form, healthy Roglic would completely change the dynamic here.
 
As I expected, it was breakaway's day. Great pefromance by Connor, who was by far the best. Good for him that tomorrow is a rest day so he can recover and maybe has some chance to defend his great position (if not a podium place then at least top10). Only a small GC fight at the end (not surprising) but the tempo was too slow for Pog, who decided to do a mini-TT and gain more time.
 
Ineos, Movistar, Astana and co seemingly forgot about the podium threat up the road.
Movistar wasn’t there. Mas only had Valverde with him by the 3rd climb. Verona is injured and MAL is way off the pace with his crashed.

Ineos rode the last climb but obviously Carapaz didn’t have it to match Pogacar.

Astana only had 1 rider. Uran was isolated. Gaudu was on the limit and cracked with Lutsenko.
 
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If feel like everyone will just race for the remaining podium spots at this point, ignoring Pogacar. He looks unstoppable and there's no point in wasting energy in trying to get time back from him. If you disregard 1st place, the race is still quite interesting. It also looks like Cav may get to 34 stage wins and a green jersey. Is there anyone on this planet that would have believed that 6 months ago?
 

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