The yellow-black formation directed by Grischa Niermann had been riding in the yellow jersey for eleven days, showed fighting spirit throughout the whole Tour, but ultimately bounced on a strong Pogacar..

For Roglic it is his third podium in a grand tour. Last year he won the Vuelta a Espana and finished third in the Giro d’Italia. It is the fourth podium for Team Jumbo-Visma in a grand tour after Steven Kruijswijk finished on the podium in Paris last year. “I am obviously very disappointed”, Roglic said. “I gave 110 percent, but I had nothing left yesterday. I feel sorry for my teammates for not finishing it off, but I didn’t do it on purpose. I just couldn’t go any faster. Despite the disappointment, I am also very proud of this second place. I’d rather finish second or third than finishing just off the podium. I am also proud of the team. We fought every day for three weeks on end and we gave everything. We continued to fight for our goal together. The way we raced was beautiful. I am very proud of that. I don’t know if we made mistakes as a team. Whether we should have raced even more aggressively. We have to analyze that. I will definitely come back to the Tour. You always want to win and be the best. We can learn from this and there are certainly areas for improvement, also with me. The motivation is there and hopefully we will come out even stronger.”

For manager Richard Plugge the end result comes as a huge disappointment, but pride dominates. “We came to win the Tour, but we didn’t succeed. We can be proud on the three stage wins, eleven days of yellow and the way we raced. We just haven’t reached our goal. We have to live with that and get the positives out of it for the future. We are very disappointed. Stunned too. We didn’t see this one coming. If you think that 57 seconds should be enough for the win then this is a huge deception. Primoz did a good time trial to the point that he heard it wasn’t going to be enough for him. Then it also starts to become a mental struggle. I don’t think we’ve done wrong much in the past three weeks. We just bounced on a strong Pogacar. We did everything we could and we executed our plans down to the last detail. But it did not work out. We learn every year. Two years ago we finished fourth and fifth in the Tour, third last year and now second. We are continuing to learn how the Tour works. Despite the disappointment, I am proud of the entire team.”

Two-time stage winner Wout van Aert placed himself in the mix in the sprint on the Champs-Élysées and finished sixth. “With Amund I was one man short in the final. He’s normally one of the last leadout riders for Dylan so he knows how it works. He had to deal with a mechanical problem on the penultimate lap so getting back to the front was difficult. I had to position myself on my own for the sprint. That went quite well and I also had a lot of speed in the last corner. I lost that speed because I was held up by Viviani. For me personally this was a fantastic Tour with two victories, but the disappointment of missing the overall win still dominates. It wasn’t easy to head into today’s final stage, but we made the switch to go for it one more time. We raced at the front for three weeks and we showed that again today. I would rather have won again, but it was not possible. Now it’s time to rest for two days and then I’ll switch my focus to the World Championships.”

Photo credit: A.S.O / Pauline Ballet