After two years where victory in the Tour de France has eluded him, Tadej Pogacar has decided that this year it was not going to happen and that he would take this Tour and do it in style, challenging the greatest legends of cycling. What he has just achieved, the Giro-Tour double, is a feat for very few cyclists.
Only Fausto Coppi in 1949 and 1952, Jacques Anquetil in 1964, Eddy Merckx in 1970, 1972 and 1974, Bernard Hinault in 1982 and 1985, Stephen Roche in 1987, Miguel Indurain in 1992 and 1993 and Marco Pantani in 1998. It has been 26 years since anyone has achieved what Pogacar has done this year and that makes him one of the greatest cyclists in history.
Pogacar is puncheur, chronoman, sprinter, climber but what he really is, is a winner. The perfect cyclist, who decides everything and who everyone fears. He is the man who, when he gets on his bike, it is to win. He raced for 52 days this season to win the double.
A Tour de France with six stages and 19 days in yellow; a Giro d’Italia with six stages and 20 days in pink. He has also won his second Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the Volta a Catalunya, his second Strade Bienche and a third place in San Remo, which he is still chasing. Of the 52 races he has raced, 45 have been ridden as a leader.
As if all this were not enough, Pogacar is the first non-racer since Bernard Hinault in 1979 to win at least six stages in an edition of the Tour de France. At just 25 years of age, he has 82 victories to his name, four grand tours with 26 stage wins, six monuments and as many as six overall World Tour classifications that make him one of the greatest, a cyclist who rides for history.
RIVALS
His rivalry with Vingegaar will be remembered for eternity as one of the most epic. The last four Tours have been theirs and they are the first riders in history to finish in the top two overall four years in a row.
They’ve recaptured France, overtaking their great rivals and inaugurating what looks like a legacy for many years to come. ‘I’ve been hearing for two years that we’re living in the best era of cycling, with Evenepoel, Vingegaar and Roglic and others coming behind, I think we can have a lot of fun,’ said the Slovenian, who set his sights on another goal: ’I want to be world champion.
