On paper, a shortened, heat-ravaged transition stage before the rest day, with no summit finish, should mean not much drama — right?

Wrong. Stage 9 turned into a full-blown classic in 38°C heat.

The fight to get in the break was savage from the get-goo. A group of sixteen finally went clear on the run-in to the brutal 4km Suc au May — too big, too messy, nobody sure it’d ever settle into a real working unit. Everyone wanted a piece of it but few wanted to actually pull in that heat. So Quinn Simmons — Captain America himself — and Tobias Halland Johannessen decided to go alone.

The reverie didn’t last too long though. Van der Poel, Pidcock, Derek Gee, Lennert Van Eetvelt, Alex Baudin and Pablo Castrillo clawed them back before the summit — now a group of serious riders was up front, and still, it was going to take everything they had to hold off what was coming.

And here’s where it got a bit weird. UAE had nothing to defend. Pogačar’s Yellow was never under threat from this move. And yet there they were, Wellens and Großschartner turning themselves inside out on the front, refusing to let the break past a minute. Team boss Mauro Gianetti’s said afterwards that the shortened stage had triggered endless attacks, and UAE’s pace was an attempt to nullify that, not chase glory – make sense to you? No, nor me either.

“This is why we were on the front, trying to calm things down… For us, it would have been good for them to get more than a minute and then things calm down. But when our boys slowed, they started either to attack or pull. So we continued to pull.”

Pogačar backed the story, sort of — insisting they hadn’t set out to catch the break, but were simply riding at Tim Wellens’ pace because Wellens “was feeling good.” Make of that what you will. Whatever the real motive, UAE’s chase dragged the gap down to six seconds by the flag — close enough to have half the press room asking why a team defending 2:42 was working this hard on a nothing day.

Back to the break! Van der Poel attacked on Mont Bessou with 25km left. Only Johannessen, Baudin and Pidcock could go with him — a genuine elite breakaway quartet, turning up the ol’ gas at the front.

Pidcock got done by his fancy Pinarello: a jammed shifter meant he had to fight the finale on his hoods instead of the drops. His own words afterwards summed up the frustration: “My bike works perfect the whole race and then today when the win is there, it doesn’t work.” It did work, but he forgot momentarily that he couldn’t change gear in the drops, so had to go on to the hoods and then it was too late. He was gracious later in saying that he did not think anyone could have stopped VDP from winning anyway.

Van der Poel led out the sprint himself from range and nobody came around him. A true warrior’s victory, and an all-time classic of a stage.

The heat conversation didn’t stop at the finish line either. Pogačar used his post-stage press time to go nuclear (sorry not nsorry!) on the whole cycling calendar: “In my opinion it’s a big topic to discuss but if I had the power to change all, I would change the whole calendar,” he said, adding he wouldn’t race in July or August in hot places at all, calling it something the sport needs to seriously think through. Earlier start times, he reckons, aren’t the fix — shifting to a 10am start “does not change anything because then you’d finish in the big heat.”

And btw, where are all those climate change deniers now?

Sat in penthouses under industrial AC units counting their corporate hush money, most likely!

They’ll be sponsoring bike teams next…

Stage 9 top 3:

1. Mathieu van der Poel
2. Tobias Halland Johannessen, same time
3. Tom Pidcock, same time

GC after Stage 9:

1. Tadej Pogačar
2. Jonas Vingegaard, +2:42
3. Isaac del Toro, +3:27