Egan Bernal’s defence of his Tour de France title wilted and then collapsed definitively in the September heat, as Primoz Roglic tightened his grip on the leader’s yellow jersey and fellow Slovenian Tadej Pogacar took his second stage win to the summit of the Grand Colombier in the French Jura. In a brutal finale to stage 15 the Ineos Grenadiers leader, unlike his sponsor’s new all-terrain vehicle, faltered on the steepest gradients, 13 kilometres from the finish, as Roglic’s Jumbo-Visma team set an infernal pace on the 17km climb. By the time Bernal reached the finish line he was almost seven and a half minutes behind Pogacar and had tumbled down the overall standings. “Today I have lost three years of my life,” Bernal told Spanish radio afterwards. “The back issue is no excuse. The team now needs to refocus our objectives for the rest of the Tour.” For his part Pogacar, who is now 40 seconds behind Roglic, celebrates his 22nd birthday just 48 hours after this year’s Tour ends, but he is not planning any parties just yet. “The perfect scenario would be to take the yellow jersey in the final time trial,” he said, “but we live in the real world. If there is a chance, I can try. I believe in our team and today they showed they can really be there for me. I hope for the best next week.” As an Indian summer settled on the Jura mountains, the Tour headed into a final phase of racing that includes 17 categorised climbs. The suffering on Sunday’s stage was compressed into the final 70km which took in two first-category climbs, the Montee de la Selle de Fromente, including sections of 22%, the Col de la Biche, and the final “beyond category” ascent of the Grand Colombier. Bernal appeared to struggle on all of them. If, as now seems certain, Bernal does not win this year’s Tour, there is likely to be an inquest at Ineos Grenadiers. Only a year ago there was talk of the Colombian becoming the race’s next serial champion, a successor to Chris Froome, but at times during this year’s race he has looked all too fallible. Froome, however, would be the first to acknowledge that every first‑time winner can suffer from “difficult second album” syndrome, after his own title defence in 2014 fell apart when he crashed and subsequently abandoned. But the rumblings of discontent emanating from within the Ineos camp, and from their former confidantes are growing. On Sunday, just a few days after Geraint Thomas had told The Guardian that “it niggles at me sometimes, not being there,” Froome, like Thomas left out of the Tour team, said that he too “could have played a role, but the team decided that was not going to be the best thing for them”. Those coded criticisms came into sharper focus on the Grand Colombier as Bernal’s title defence, confronted by another Slovenian onslaught from Roglic and Pogacar, definitively crumbled. On Saturday Sean Yates, the former sports director to Team Sky during Bradley Wiggins’ first Tour win in 2012, told French media that “questions should be asked of Bernal’s preparation”. Yates said: “Ineos came to the Tour thinking Bernal was the best rider in the peloton. But at the moment the best rider is Roglic. He’s flying.” Others, meanwhile, have also been asking questions of Jumbo-Visma’s preparation, as the Dutch team yet again ruthlessly put their rivals to the sword. Roglic, as inexpressive as ever, batted away the now-traditional questions asked of Tour leaders’ credibility as they enter the race’s final stages. “They do a lot of [doping] controls and also today, after six o’clock, I did a control, so I think there’s nothing to hide. Looking from my side, you can definitely trust it,” Roglic said of his performance. Pogacar put the rush of Slovenian success down to “a little bit of a coincidence and a lot of hard work through all the decades”, adding: “I think we have really good development programmes in Slovenia, but a little short of money perhaps. I hope they will get better after this good period for Slovenian cycling.” For Dave Brailsford, who chose to leave an out-of-sorts Thomas and a short-of-form Froome on the bench, the final moments of the climb to the Grand Colombier exemplified how far his once-dominant team had fallen. For the first time since 2014, when Froome crashed out, there were none of his riders in the group of leaders on a Tour de France summit finish and none placed in the top 10 overall. There’s no doubt it will hurt, but the question now is where does he, and his all-star team, go from here.