‘I’m gone. I’m dead,’ crackles the team radio. Unzipped jersey flailing in the wind, his trademark tufts poking through his helmet, Tadej Pogačar couldn’t look more done if he tried. His 2023 Tour de France dream is over, and the culprit? Yesterday’s time trial didn’t help, nor Jumbo-Visma turning the screws today. But it’s not the time gap or a metronomic Jonas Vingegaard that has floored the Slovenian, it’s this climb: the Col de la Loze.
‘A kilometre here just goes on and on forever,’ says commentator Sean Kelly as the moto camera takes an alarming tilt.
Joining forces
Located between the ski resorts of Méribel and Courchevel in France’s Savoie department, the Col de la Loze is a beast, albeit a newly discovered one. Until a few years ago its roads terminated at
