Luke Plapp's incredible mountain time trial in vain as Tadej Pogačar continues to dominate Tour de France
The 24-year-old Plapp gave everything to finish fifth over the unforgiving 10.9km uphill slog against the clock from Loudenvielle to the Pyrenean ski resort Peyragudes.
The Melburnian found himself leading for a couple of hours from all challengers after covering the brutal course in 24 minutes and 58 seconds, until the Tour's biggest guns came down the ramp among the final 10 starters.
And while Germany's Florian Lipowitz (24:56), five-time Grand Tour champ Primoz Roglic (24:20) and two-time Tour champion Jonas Vingegaard (23:36) all surpassed the Australian's time, it was Pogačar who once again showed them all he was in a different league as he clocked 23 minutes dead.
It was his fourth stage victory of the Tour that he's turning into a one-man super show as he put another 36 seconds into his advantage over Vingegaard, who's now 4 minutes and 7 seconds behind with the toughest stages still to come.
Plapp, the big engine of the Australian Jayco AlUla team, had won the national time trial championship at the start of the year and annexed his first Grand Tour stage win at the Giro d'Italia.
This time, he had focused all his energies on this stage. "The last minute, though, was painful, but all in all I enjoyed the race, nevertheless," he said.
"I've missed the break these last few stages, and that enabled me to take it easy in the grupetto. I'll definitely be feeling today's effort in my legs tomorrow … but anyway, I wanted to represent the colours (of the Australian flag) well and I'm happy."
He predicted, as he sat in the provisional leader's chair watching the rest of the field trying to catch him, that the winner would be "a minute or minute-and-a-half quicker", but Pogačar was so brilliant he ended up almost two minutes faster.
Yet Plapp earned one big scalp in particular, as he proved 41 seconds quicker than Olympic champ Remco Evenepoel, who was suffering on the climb and only just clung on to his third place in the GC, now a massive 7:24 behind Pogačar. Lipowitz is just six seconds off a podium place.
Pogačar's latest amazing display came just a day after he had destroyed the field on the famed Hautacam climb, and he reckoned his 21st Tour stage win felt just as sweet.
"I'm super happy. I wanted everything to be perfect. I almost blew up in the end, but I saw the timer at the top and it gave me an extra push because I saw I'm gonna win," said the 26-year-old who is set to be crowned champ for a fourth time.
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