Gary Naylor gets in touch: “I do feel that, as the patron of the peloton and leader of the team with the biggest budget, Pog does need to be careful about the well-being of the sport. Who’s going to sponsor a team to see its riders continually arriving at the finish a minute or two down on Pog or a sprinter and a scattering of their domestiques in two of the GTs?

“The real villain is Christian Prudhomme, who was too clever for his own good in jamming the Galibier into Stage 4 looking for a three week mano-a-mano between Pog and Vingegaard. For very understandable reasons, it didn’t happen and we’re left with a rider who likes to win winning when he likes.”

Vingegaard is speaking, and saying the first two weeks were the highest level he had been at but the last had been too much, after the preparation. His plan for today seems to look for Remco and hold on to second.

Some discussion of the Pog/hog thing.

Matthew Lysaght: “Absolutely not, in my eyes anyway. It was the Queen Stage, he’s in yellow and he clearly wanted to “layeth the smacketh down” on Visma. As they hinted on Eurosport, he could have eyes on Cavs record too and that is all the more reason to do what he did.”

Joe Pearson: “After yesterday’s stage, some of the commentators (mostly the former riders) on USA/NBC were grousing that Pogacar was breaking some unwritten rule by taking the stage from Jorgenson. And I don’t get it. One of the qualities of being the GOAT is to have no mercy for your competitors. Did Michael Jordan have mercy? No. How about Tiger Woods? Absolutely not. If he wants to go down in history, Pog should crush all of those around him, every chance he gets.”

Alberto Contador, speaking to Discovery at the Nice start line, says of Pogacar: “he can improve.” There’s big smiles between Vingegaard and Pogacar at the start line, with Richard Carapaz in polka as they set off on the départ fictif.

Iain Cameron gets in touch: “Seeing Lance Armstrong criticising Pogacar, saying he shouldn’t have attacked again yesterday, just underlines why I love Pog. Armstrong, then Sky, and latterly Visma, liked to make one or two decisive moves then shut the race down. But for Tadej attack is the best form of defence, and it’s great to watch. And uber-cheat Armstrong should keep his thoughts to himself anyway. Ciao.”

Before all the revelations, and bar a couple of (in)famous incidents, Armstrong’s defensive riding was such a drain on Le Tour.

Friday was a grim day in the grupetto, with Cav making it but Arnaud DeMare not so lucky.

And some ructions between riders over a “sticky bottle”.

It will be loud and rowdy on today’s climbs.

Salient point made here by the breakaway king. Is Pog a hog?

Oh, and visit Nice. It’s really..er, nice.

Here’s Jeremy Whittle’s report from the finish of Stage 19.

William Fotheringham’s verdict

Shorter than the day before, but even more vertical metres of climbing. By now most of the questions should have answers: can Pogacar hang on to the form that won him the Giro, can Evenepoel find some climbing legs in his first Tour, have Roglic and Vingegaard recovered from their horrific crash in April, and is Egan Bernal anywhere near his old self? As on Friday, this is a day for the overall contenders in a totally unique final weekend to the Tour.

Preamble