Defending Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo Visma) closed the gap on rival Tadej Pogachar with a time trial victory in Combrue.

Vingegaard took his first stage win of the competition for himself and his team on stage 16, beating Pogachar by 1:38 after only 22.4 km.

With two big mountain stages left, the usual caveat that the race is not over until Paris still very much applies, but Vingegaard showed his destructive strength by ending the stalemate between the two so far.

Vingegaard himself was surprised by the magnitude of his victory, telling reporters after the race: "I even doubted my power meter.

"But I have prepared for this for a long time and all the hard work has paid off."

Vingegaard was even prepared to show off a bit of his own power data, which he had not expected.

"I was holding back on the flat part of the course, hoping to get about 360 watts out of it. But I ended up putting out 380 watts between the two climbs."

Regardless of Vingegaard's poking around in his data, if you look at the time difference between the two, Pogachar had a great run, beating the provisional best time of Remi Cabaña (Sudar-Quick Step) and the provisional best time of his teammate Wout Van Art Even if he had, it was clear that Vingegaard was on another planet.

At the first time check after 7.1km, Vingegaard had a 16-second lead, which grew to 30 seconds with 10km to go; at the top of the Côte de Mancy, a second-class mountain, the gap grew to 1:05 and continued to grow until the finish.

The time trial had four sections and was by no means straightforward, but Vingegaard's strategy seemed to be working.

"There was a pretty hard climb early on. After the climb, it was all about recovering on the descent and then holding back a bit on the flat part."

"Then on the final climb, I was riding hard again, but holding back a bit because I had to conserve my strength for the final drag to the finish."

He said he had no idea about the time difference, but it was clear that seeing Pogachar's trailing team car in front of him greatly boosted his morale.

"Today's time trial surprised me," he said. But today I was able to execute my plan perfectly and it's my first TT win in the Tour, so I'm really proud. So I'm really proud."

Vingegaard has taken a big step toward a second straight Tour de France victory, and after beating Pogachar last year in the Col de Granon, Vingegaard knows it all too well. The 2,300-meter-high Pass de la Rose is coming up on Wednesday.

In any case, after discussing the time trial in detail, Vingegaard was more cautious about how he and Jumbo Visma would handle the two mountain stages coming up. Either way, I'll keep fighting all the way to Paris."