Likewise I thought far too much was made of the 'efforts' Pog made closing down Jorgenson. All he did was slightly up his pace for a short time which also meant all the others also had to anyway so I'm not seeing how Jonas or anyone else had it any easier (very marginal drafting aside). He also forced others to do the work to close Remco when he got a gap. If VLAB want to test him they probably need to find a way to make him work harder than he'd like tomorrow before the TT on Thursday but again, Jonas still has to put in pretty much the same effort if he wants to stay on Pog's wheel so I really don't see a huge benefit of these much vaunted team tactics.
Well the thing about tactics is they don't always work, but you have to try something if you want to compete. Visma's strategy is clear, they're going to try and tire Pog and UAE and then attack him in the mountains. Some days the tactics are going to gain you something, others maybe not. Yesterday they managed to isolate Pog and make him do marginally more work than he might have liked, and marginally more than Vingegaard, but it wasn't by a huge amount. They did, however, burn off his domestiques and get a stage win and morale boost for not all that much effort. And is that now two or three stages where UAE has declined to chase for the stage win? Pog can't be all that happy with that and Vingegaard can probably be pleased not to have ceded further bonus seconds on territory that's in Pog's favour.
It's also worth noting that stage after stage Pog has been saying that they'd changed their stage tactics because of what Visma had done. And it's good to be adaptable, but it shows they're being kept on their toes and that it's Visma that are currently in control of much of the race and UAE who are reactive.
