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By Vincent Daheron
PLATEAU DE BEILLE, France (Reuters) -Tour de France leader Tadej Pogacar highlighted his climbing credentials in the Pyrenees when he rode solo to victory in Sunday's 15th stage, a picturesque 198-kilometer (123-mile) ride from Loudenvielle to Plateau De Beille.
Slovenian Pogacar dropped Jonas Vingegaard on the final climb, finishing one minute and eight seconds ahead of the Dane, his closest rival, to win his third stage on this year's Tour and second in a row.
Vingegaard attacked with just over 10km left, with Pogacar sticking to his wheel as the pair surged ahead of the leading group to set up what promised to be an enthralling duel to the finish line.
With 5.3 km to go, however, Vingegaard knew he had run out of gas and looked forlornly over his shoulder at Pogacar and the Slovenian immediately made his move, overtaking the Visma–Lease a Bike rider before disappearing into the distance.
"I would never imagine this kind of outcome after the second week. I'm super happy with my shape. Today was super hot and it was a really hard day. I always struggle with the heat and the team did a super good job with cooling me down," Pogacar told reporters.
"When we came to the bottom of the last climb I was at the limit a little bit when Jonas tried to drop me, but I could see that he was starting to suffer a little bit.
"When he tried to drop me the last time, I could see that he doesn't have the legs to go to the top, so I tried on my own."
As Pogacar crossed the line with no other rider in sight, he held his arms aloft after extending his overall lead over Vingegaard to three minutes and nine seconds.
"Pogacar was stronger than Jonas. Jonas did a super good job but we have an opponent that is stronger so chapeau to Tadej, chapeau to team UAE," Visma's sports director Grischa Niermann said.
"They have a good margin, a good lead now. We have to accept that, for the moment we can only be happy and be proud of the performance that we showed and also accept that someone is better."
Remco Evenepoel, who is third in the general classification, finished nearly three minutes behind the Slovenian, and the Soudal-QuickStep rider is now over five minutes behind Pogacar in the overall standings.
Such was Pogacar's dominance that only 36 riders had crossed the finish line half an hour after the Team UAE Emirates rider had completed the stage.
Monday is a rest day and the Tour continues on Tuesday with stage 16, a 189km flat ride from Gruissan to Nimes.
(Reporting by Rohith Nair in Bengaluru and Vincent Daheron; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Ed Osmond)
