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Tadej Pogacar has his sights set on more history at this summer’s Tour de France.
The outstanding Slovenian is already in the conversation for the greatest of all time in road cycling and over the next three-and-a-bit weeks he can join the exclusive club of five-time Tour de France winners.
Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Jacques Anquetil, and Miguel Indurain may soon have a new member of their exclusive club as Pogacar targets a third straight Tour title.
It is hard to find an argument against him achieving it.
After a near-perfect run through the Classics – he was edged out by Wout van Aert in a sprint at Paris-Roubaix in the only minor blot on the copy book – Pogacar has confirmed his stage-racing form with overall wins at the Tour de Romandie and Tour de Suisse.
He will go to Barcelona with an absolutely stacked UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad ready to support him, Adam Yates, Brandon McNulty and Isaac Del Toro all worthy team leaders in their own right.
Two-time Tour winner Jonas Vingegaard, second to Pogacar in each of the last two editions, is once again backed to provide the closest competition.
The Dane heads to Barcelona on the back of winning the Giro d’Italia and the question is whether that ride sharpened his form or dulled it.
When Pogacar completed the Giro-Tour double in 2024 he became only the eighth man ever – and first since Marco Pantani in 1998 – to achieve it, an indication of the challenge Vingegaard faces, even before you consider he is trying to deny his great rival.
That said, Vingegaard’s preparations for each of the past two Tours, in which he finished second, were greatly compromised by crashes. A storming victory in the Giro is surely a better way to warm up than that.
Pogacar and Vingegaard have had the Tour carved up between them since 2020 and, even though this is, on paper, one of the deepest fields for some time, the betting odds indicate the lack of belief that stranglehold might be broken this July.
Remco Evenepoel has attempted to insert himself into the Pogacar-Vingegaard rivalry at the Tour in the last couple of years, but his third-placed finish in 2024 remains his best.
Having made the big-money move to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe in the winter, the Belgian must first of all ensure he has the team leadership over Florian Lipowitz, who rode his way to third overall last summer.
An X-factor is young Frenchman Paul Seixas. Just 19, Seixas took the challenge to Pogacar in the hilly classics, finishing second to him at both Strade Bianche and Liege-Bastogne-Liege this year.
A crash at the Tour Auvergne Rhone-Alpes has hurt his build-up, but Seixas is a key rider to watch for home fans desperate for overdue French success.
But Seixas is surely still one for the future. We live in the age of Pogacar. He is still only 27 years old and joining the list of greats with five Tour titles is not the limit of his ambitions.
Continue reading...
The outstanding Slovenian is already in the conversation for the greatest of all time in road cycling and over the next three-and-a-bit weeks he can join the exclusive club of five-time Tour de France winners.
Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Jacques Anquetil, and Miguel Indurain may soon have a new member of their exclusive club as Pogacar targets a third straight Tour title.
It is hard to find an argument against him achieving it.
After a near-perfect run through the Classics – he was edged out by Wout van Aert in a sprint at Paris-Roubaix in the only minor blot on the copy book – Pogacar has confirmed his stage-racing form with overall wins at the Tour de Romandie and Tour de Suisse.
He will go to Barcelona with an absolutely stacked UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad ready to support him, Adam Yates, Brandon McNulty and Isaac Del Toro all worthy team leaders in their own right.
Two-time Tour winner Jonas Vingegaard, second to Pogacar in each of the last two editions, is once again backed to provide the closest competition.
The Dane heads to Barcelona on the back of winning the Giro d’Italia and the question is whether that ride sharpened his form or dulled it.
When Pogacar completed the Giro-Tour double in 2024 he became only the eighth man ever – and first since Marco Pantani in 1998 – to achieve it, an indication of the challenge Vingegaard faces, even before you consider he is trying to deny his great rival.
That said, Vingegaard’s preparations for each of the past two Tours, in which he finished second, were greatly compromised by crashes. A storming victory in the Giro is surely a better way to warm up than that.
Pogacar and Vingegaard have had the Tour carved up between them since 2020 and, even though this is, on paper, one of the deepest fields for some time, the betting odds indicate the lack of belief that stranglehold might be broken this July.
Remco Evenepoel has attempted to insert himself into the Pogacar-Vingegaard rivalry at the Tour in the last couple of years, but his third-placed finish in 2024 remains his best.
Having made the big-money move to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe in the winter, the Belgian must first of all ensure he has the team leadership over Florian Lipowitz, who rode his way to third overall last summer.
An X-factor is young Frenchman Paul Seixas. Just 19, Seixas took the challenge to Pogacar in the hilly classics, finishing second to him at both Strade Bianche and Liege-Bastogne-Liege this year.
A crash at the Tour Auvergne Rhone-Alpes has hurt his build-up, but Seixas is a key rider to watch for home fans desperate for overdue French success.
But Seixas is surely still one for the future. We live in the age of Pogacar. He is still only 27 years old and joining the list of greats with five Tour titles is not the limit of his ambitions.
Continue reading...
