The men’s final at Wimbledon in 2019 was very close. The cricket World Cup Final in the same year was even tighter. Matej Mohoric’s victory on stage 19 of this year’s Tour de France was decided by a few centimetres.
But those differences appear enormous compared to the advantage Mohoric holds over Joāo Almeida going in to the closing day of the 80th Tour of Poland.
After an extraordinary individual time trial performance in Katowice, Mohorič finished 12 seconds behind his closest GC rival. That is the exact lead he had over the UAE rider before the stage. As a result, the two are tied on a total race time of 22 hours, 49 minutes, 7 minutes.
So after almost 24 hours of racing, Bahrain Victorious’ leader holds on to the yellow jersey by 74 hundredths of a second.
“I gave it my best, and I couldn’t have gone one second faster today,” he reflected.
“I maybe started a little too easy, and held too much back before the first time-check. The second part of the course was the toughest, and I had really good legs so I gave it everything and did just enough to hold on to the jersey.
I’m really happy because of all the work my teammates did all week. It’s not over yet, but we have a super strong team here and I have full faith in them for tomorrow to defend the jersey.”
One stage remains, 167 flat kilometres between Zabrze and Krakow, which should end in a bunch sprint. But the fight for the title is not over yet … there are two intermediate sprints along the way with bonus seconds on offer, and if anyone knows how dangerous the final stage of a race can be when there is only a slight advantage, it’s the Slovenian …
“The last GC I won, at the Cro Race last year, I was two seconds behind Jonas Vingegaard going into the last stage. But I managed to finish second in the bunch sprint in Zagreb and I took the overall”
With Michal Kwiatkowski (Ineos) now 14 seconds back, Almeida is realistically the only potential challenge to a 7th career GC title for the 28 year old. Bahrain will expect – and be ready for – UAE, to try everything they can to wrestle victory from the jaws of defeat.
“I just have to make sure Joāo doesn’t take any bonus seconds. If he goes for them so will I. Only he can take the jersey from me so I will make sure I never leave his wheel all day. We’ve switched positions from two years ago, when he won the Tour of Poland & I was second, but I should be faster in the bonus sprints, so we’ll see!”
And so Bahrain head to the start line tomorrow confident (but not overconfident) of a 12th overall win since the team’s inception, the latest of which was that of Mohoric in Croatia last October. Following stages in Slovenia, the Tour de France and here in the past few weeks, topping the GC podium would seem like a fitting continuation to what is clearly a golden period in Matej’s career. And no-one deserves it more.
“If UAE are up for the challenge, then so are we,” concluded the race leader. “I think they will try; they have to try, they have nothing to lose. It doesn’t scare me. Would Joāo be willing to risk a crash with the World Championships only 3 days away? I don’t know, but if he’s up for the challenge, so am I, and I’ll make sure he doesn’t get out of my sight.”
