Cycling – Tadej Pogačar pushes the boundaries of sport

Tadej Pogačar has set new standards this cycling season. He won the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France with superiority. Then he became world champion and also won the classic monuments Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Tour of Lombardy. That’s huge. But it also leads to frustration among competitors, experts and spectators. »Tadej is virtually unbeatable in his current condition. And you never know what the next year will bring. Maybe he’s even better at that,” professional cyclist Primož Roglič allowed a glimpse into his mental state.

In the camp of Pogačar’s main rival Jonas Vingegaard, the mood is not much more optimistic. »Pogačar is simply the best. It’s up to the rest of the peloton to reduce the gap,” said Frans Maassen, the Dane’s sporting director. Maassen doesn’t dare to think about catching up or even overtaking, at least publicly.

Boring races

Former Danish professional Michael Rasmussen expressed Pogačar’s superiority even more dramatically: “It’s like watching a penalty in football where the goalkeeper is missing and the only tension is which corner Messi chooses to take the shot,” said today’s columnist. »If Tadej Pogačar steps up, no one will dare to go. “They’re just fighting for the places behind,” complained the tour’s former mountain king. That makes the races boring. But Rasmussen also feels sorry for Pogačar’s professional colleagues: “All in all, they are confronted with a kind of superpower. If Pogačar starts together with Majka, Sivakov and Hirschi, the rest are powerless,” he alluded to the strength of Team Emirates.

The Swiss Marc Hirschi is leaving the racing team for the local Tudor team. With the Ecuadorian Jonathan Narváez, a new man with a big engine and even greater top speed is joining Pogačar’s team. The support is unlikely to become weaker in the coming year.

Financial explosion

Pogačar also sets new standards in other areas. According to “Gazzetta dello Sport”, his annual salary was increased to 8 million euros – without bonus payments. What is new in cycling is the transfer fee set at 200 million euros. With team budgets between 20 and 50 million euros per year, a huge surge in investment would have to shock the industry for one of the rival racing teams to raise such a sum.

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The Slovenian’s triumphs also mean the descent of the once dominant racing team Ineos Grenadiers into insignificance. Last season the British only achieved 14 wins. A year earlier there were 38, but at peak times, when Chris Froome set the pace, 43 were achieved.

Ineos gives up

The failure led to the replacement of managers. Rod Ellingworth, once the second man behind team founder David Brailsford, Steve Cummings, who had only been in office for a year as “Director of Racing”, or Xabier Artetxe as mentor of the Spanish-speaking faction around the former Tour winner Egan Bernal – they all left the team. The new leadership team no longer looks at the rankings in the big tours, but instead looks for happiness in stage successes. The white flag is raised.

The organizers also face a problem. Old tricks against boredom through oppressive dominance are unlikely to work. In 1930, the organizers of the Giro d’Italia gave Alfredo Binda all the prize money before the start so that he would not compete. Binda, who had previously won the Giro three times in a row, accepted the deal but took an overall victory three years later. Similar suggestions are likely to fall on deaf ears for Pogačar given his new contract.