Tour de France: Tadej, the relentless – Pogačar wins the Tour de France

Tadej Pogačar only gives gifts to his friends. He explained his victory at the Isola 2000 ski station on Friday as follows: “We actually just wanted to control the stage. But then Visma put us under pressure. My team therefore had to work a lot. And because they did such a good job, I thought I had to thank them by winning the stage. The American Matteo Jorgenson fell victim to his gratitude. At the bottom of the climb he still had a lead of almost four minutes. »I thought that might be enough. But you never know against Pogacar,” he said resignedly at the finish.

Jorgenson’s misfortune was that he is signed to Visma-Lease a Bike and is the main helper of Pogačar’s main rival Vingegaard. “I’m not going to let my toughest opponent’s team win if I can win myself,” Pogačar said afterwards. And how much he wanted Vingegaard and his team was shown even more clearly on Saturday. Then he and Vingegaard pulled up the serpentines to the Col de la Couillole. Vingegaard did the leadership work. He had previously parried an attack from Evenepoel and countered himself. Pogačar was stuck to his rear wheel. “I then decided to recover a little behind Jonas in order to have more strength for the sprint for the stage win,” said the Slovenian with relish. Because that’s exactly how it happened.

No mercy for Vingegaard

At the finish, the two rivals politely congratulated each other. Vingegaard was still upset. “I was hoping that Tadej would leave this stage win to me,” he said. Nothing there, the Slovenian countered verbally. »It’s sport, we’re going to do it. And let my toughest rival win himself – that’s not possible,” said Pogačar, immediately inflicting another defeat on his toughest opponent in the final time trial from Monaco to Nice.

On the 33.7 kilometers along the Côte d’Azur, Pogačar Vingegaard lost another minute. As with the Giro, the Slovenian took six stage wins and the overall ranking. The only thing he was denied on the tour was the mountain jersey compared to the Tour of Italy. In France he had to admit defeat to mountain king Richard Carapaz from Ecuador. Nevertheless, the winning patterns of both tours are similar. An early success should shock the competition. At the Giro, Pogačar struck on the second day in Oropa and rode in pink. On the tour he had to wait for the fourth part of the day. But there too, on the driveway to Galibier, he attacked. He stormed towards the summit alone and set a new best time for the famous climb. Looking back, he described the stage at Galibier as “my most important”. »That’s where I was able to make my first mark. And after that everything went smoothly as planned,” he concluded. In the end, Pogačar easily added five more daily victories and mountain records.

His assistant Nils Politt also stated that the plan had been fulfilled to the maximum. “We won all the stages that we marked red,” the Cologne native told “nd” at the start of the 20th stage. UAE had only marked it in yellow, as Politt revealed with a laugh. But because he was then alone at the front with Vingegaard, Pogačar, in his unrelenting hunger for victory, was finally forced to add this part of the day to his success statistics.

In the category of most stage wins on the Tour, the Slovenian is now tied for 8th place with the Frenchman Jean Alavoine with 17 successes. The new record holder Mark Cavendish is still a long way away with his 35 victories. The Brit warned Pogačar only half-jokingly: “Please leave me the record.”

More stage wins than the young Eddy Merckx

His concern is not unfounded. Even cycling legend Eddy Merckx, at the same age Pogačar is now, 25, had only achieved 14 daily successes (plus another in the team time trial). Merckx has already had to hand over a record to the current tour winner. With 20 days in the pink jersey and 18 in the yellow, the Slovenian surpassed the Belgian’s record of 37 leading jerseys at Grand Tours in one year. In the excitement of his own best performances, the Slovenian even declared himself “my best self” in the current state.

Opponent Vingegaard, on the other hand, was only his second best self. “In the first two weeks I was at the level of my performance in 2023. In the last week, unfortunately, I remained below my level,” said the Dane. This then explains the dominance. And whether Pogačar and UAE remained within the limits set by the World Anti-Doping Agency will only be known when the testing procedures for the latest substances have improved and are used retroactively. We can only hope that Tadej Pogačar’s “best self” is also morally flawless.