A few more grains of rice tip the scales. Tadej Pogachar is slowly but surely closing in on the yellow jersey won by Jonas Vingegaard in the Tour de France. The gap is still small, but the Slovenian gained another eight seconds back on stage 13 at the Grand Colombier, confirming the direction he took last week.

As in the Puy de Dome last weekend, Pogachar had a touch more than Vingegaard when he showed sharp acceleration in the final 600 meters. Vingegaard did not bend, much less break, but he was no match for Pogachar's supersonic rhythm, losing four seconds in real time and another four seconds in time bonuses.

As history has proven, in a tight race like this, eight seconds is all it takes. Of course, the ultimate value of the seconds gained here will be confirmed in the overall class in Paris, but the psychological value is already clear at this point.

"It's not necessarily a psychological thing, it's more a question of leg strength," UAE Team Emirates Sports Manager Maxine Joxen Fernandez insisted outside the team bus at the start of the climb up the Cyrus. 'Taking some seconds is really good for us.'

In the overall standings, Pogachar is just nine seconds behind the maillot jaune, but perhaps more importantly, he has now surpassed Vingegaard in three consecutive direct confrontations in this race. By contrast, in last year's Tour, Pogachar never once dropped Vinghegor, despite dizzying combinations in the Alps and Pyrenees.

Pogachar led the UAE Team Emirates team in the peloton for most of the afternoon, setting the tempo on the 17km climb of the Grand Colombier. Michal Kwiatkowski (Ineos) held off an early break to take the stage win, but Pogachar's late burst of acceleration earned him third place and a four-second bonus second.

"In the end, it was a successful day for us, we fell back a couple of seconds, but we were still able to win the stage," said Pogachar. It was a good day for us," Pogachar said. We won a little bit of the yellow, if not the victory," Pogachar said.

Friday's stage in the Jura was the first of three mountain stages to open the second week, but the first stage was more tailored to Pogachar's puncher's talents than Vingegaard's endurance. The team led the pack for most of the kilometers and set a fast pace on the climbs before the finish.

The efforts of Marc Soler, Felix Groschertner, and Rafal Mayka helped shrink the yellow jersey group, giving the UAE a numerical advantage over the Vingegaard Jumbo Visma team for the first time in this race. But when Pogachar's teammate Adam Yates accelerated with 3km to go, Vingegaard's deluxe domestique, Zep Kus, temporarily brought the pack together. Of course, Vingegaard was able to keep up better than anyone else, but he was not able to catch up as well as he would have liked and eventually let Pogachar's wheel escape before the line.

"On the climb, I had a plan with an order of Majka, Felix, and Soler," Fernandez said. Obviously, the plan then was a surprise attack with Adam." However, in the last 600 meters, Taddeji closed the gap to the breakaway with a full acceleration, closing the gap to a few seconds. 0]

Pogachar's performance allowed him to plant new seeds of doubt in Vingegaard's mind. Fernandez, however, laughed that he did not think the UAE had calculated that much before the stage began.

"Never, ever calculate what will happen. This is not about math, it's about the legs and the bike," Fernandez said. [Cycling is really simple. You don't talk about it in declarations or interviews, you talk about it with your legs. Taddei was a force today in the perfect area for him, the last 30km before the finish. He was a puncher and was able to gain four seconds plus a bonus four seconds. That's why I was able to shave eight seconds off my time."

The eternal decider resumes on Saturday with one of the Tour's toughest stages, the 152km to Morzine. If the Grand Colombier, which Pogachar won in 2020, was something of a home for him, Vingegaard and Jumbo Visma have vowed to tackle a day-long ordeal like stage 14.

"This weekend is really complicated. This weekend is really complicated, it's the Alps, pure Alps. These two days are important, but in the last three mountain stages Taddei has held second place," said Fernandez.

Pogachar had already lost 53 seconds to Vingegaard when he struggled on stage 5, the Col de Marie Blanc. In the eight stages since then, the momentum has been with Pogachar and the scoreboard is approaching par. [The Tour is still long. The Tour is still long. Right now I'm just taking it one day at a time and taking chances on these few seconds."