Pogacar wins Tour de France 10th stage in Bastille Day showdown

Tadej Pogacar shrugged off the boo-boys and powered to victory on France's national holiday with another dominant display on Tuesday's mountainous 10th stage to extend his overall lead at the Tour de France.

World champion Pogacar won his third stage at this year's Tour – and for the third time on Bastille Day – to extend his lead over Jonas Vingegaard to more than three and a half minutes.

It is the largest gap Pogacar has ever had over his rivals at this stage of the race.

It was also the four-time champion's 24th stage victory at the Tour, moving him to within one win of Frenchman Andre Leducq – who twice won the Tour in the 1930s – in fourth in that list.

And even some jeers from the side of the road did not detract from his enjoyment.

"Today was an incredible day. The team did a super good job," said the 27-year-old Slovenian.

"We targeted this stage since a long time ago and it also happens that two years ago Jonas beat me in the sprint fair and square."

That was two years ago, and the last time that Vingegaard beat Pogacar in a battle to win a stage.

"I didn't know I'm gonna win until the last kilometre and then I remember it's Bastille Day and I try to honour the yellow jersey," added Pogacar.

"And thanks to all the fans that they came today to the road and it was an amazing atmosphere, even though (there was) some booing.

"All the guys that were booing, they give us more power."

Vingegaard wilts

The reigning champion attacked 15.5km from the finish of the 166.6km stage in the Cantal mountains and quickly opened up a decisive lead.

Behind him, the battle was for the minor placings – both on the day and in the overall standings.

Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel dug in to finish second on the day, 32sec behind Pogacar, with French teenage hope Paul Seixas pipping Florian Lipowitz to third place two seconds later.

Vingegaard wilted on the uphill drag to the finish line and came home seventh at 44sec.

He is now 3min 36sec behind Pogacar with Evenepoel climbing to third overall another 30sec back.

Pogacar's team-mate Isaac Del Toro was the biggest loser on the day, dropping from third to seventh overall after finishing the stage eighth at 1min 31sec.

It took about 50km for the day's breakaway to form as Mads Pedersen's Lidl-Trek team set a furious pace to set him up for the intermediate sprint, where he extended his lead in the green sprinters' jersey competition.

A 31-man group did get away but soon it was Spaniard Javier Romo who went solo for around 50km before Pogacar's UAE Emirates-XRG team reeled him in with 38km left.

That was also the signal for former Giro d'Italia winner Richard Carapaz to launch his bid for victory on the 7.8km-long Puy Mary climb. Teenage Tour de France debutant Paul Seixas finished an impressive third on the Bastille Day stage

He stretched that out to around a minute and a quarter on the rapid descent to the key 4.4km-long and punishingly steep Col de Pertus but once Pogacar launched his blistering attack just over a kilometre from the summit of that climb, the final result was never in doubt.

He flew past Carapaz 250m from the summit and crested that with a lead of 20sec over a group including Vingegaard, Evenepoel, Seixas, Lipowitz and Spaniard Juan Ayuso.

By the foot of the descent, Pogacar had a lead of around 16sec on the chasers, but he was simply too strong for them to close that and even eked out more time to the finish.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)