After 15 stages of the Giro d’Italia, Tadej Pogačar’s lead stands at 6:41. Seventy years have passed since a maglia rosa reached the same point in the race with a bigger advantage, but the circumstances of Carlo Clerici’s hold on the lead could scarcely have been more different.
The 1954 Giro has gone down in lore for the fuga bidone – the soft break – on the road to L’Aquila in the opening week that allowed Clerici to open up what became an insurmountable lead. After stage 15, Clerici led by 14:18, and aided by Swiss teammate Hugo Koblet, the strongest man in the race, he carried pink to Milan a week later.
The final week of that Giro is best remembered for the controversy regarding the strike on the Passo del Bernina on the penultimate day. In protest at the paltry prize money, the peloton staged a go-slow on the final mountain stage, taking over nine hours to cover the 222km to Saint Moritz.
In 2024, by contrast, the overwhelming favourite for the Giro is winning the race and travelling at supersonic speed. When Pogačar accelerated on the Passo del Foscagno on Sunday afternoon, he gained a minute on his rivals within the first two kilometres of the attack. He tacked on another minute or so in the 12km that remained, helping himself to his fourth stage win of this Giro in the process.
Monday’s edition of Il Corriere della Sera described the latest exhibit in Pogačar’s private gallery as “one of the most astonishing feats of recent decades in cycling” and spoke of power numbers during his initial acceleration – 920 watts for 13 seconds, per the newspaper – that would “make devotees of human physiology squint”.
Speaking to reporters in a video conference during Monday’s rest day press conference in Livigno, however, Pogačar gently downplayed the idea that his display on Sunday’s stage had been among the very best of his career, though he didn’t outline the precise hierarchy of his various feats to this point.
“It’s hard to compare,” Pogačar said. “I would say it was one of my top three high mountain performances. It wasn’t a top-three all-time performance of mine, but for sure it was up there.
"I felt super good on the bike. It was a super long stage with a lot of climbing, so that’s always a bit of a different story, but I was really happy with the legs and with how the condition is going day to day.”
On the mountaintop on Sunday evening, Pogačar had described the special resonance Livigno held for him, both as a training site dating back to his junior days and due to the ski resort’s prominence in his relationship with his girlfriend Urška Žigart, who rides for Liv Jayco AlUla. A day later, Pogačar clarified that the win was significant from a personal standpoint, but others held greater importance in the context of the sport.
“There are a lot of wins that have much more weight on them,” he said. “I didn’t say it was one of the biggest, but it’s among the top. It’s hard to categorise all the victories, especially if you win Tour de France and Monuments – but to win the queen stage in Grand Tour is something really special.”
Tour de France
It says much about this Giro, of course, that reporters were already devoting part of Pogačar’s rest day press conference to weighing up the merits of his various victories. That kind of chatter is usually reserved for the afterglow of overall victory, but perhaps there’s no harm in making a head start when this Giro already feels like a foregone conclusion.
Over the past week, conversation had already been shifting towards Pogačar’s chances of pulling off the Giro-Tour double, last achieved by Marco Pantani in 1998.
At the Grande Partenza in Turin, UAE Team Emirates had politely suggested that thoughts of the Tour would be verboten until after the finish in Rome, but Pogačar’s mammoth gaps over Geraint Thomas, et al, have seen that directive quietly cast aside.
Pogačar confirmed that he had no plans to add an extra race to his schedule between the Giro and the Tour. His thinking seems sound, given that Alberto Contador’s decision to race – and win – the Route du Sud after landing the 2015 Giro ultimately proved costly in July. Jacques Anquetil and Stephen Roche both stated that their best form came in Italy when they completed the double, but Pogačar was optimistic about the idea of shining in France despite his exertions here.
“I never did the Giro and Tour, but based on what people always say, if you finish Giro good and recover after it, you have really good legs in the Tour,” Pogačar said. “Let’s hope for that, I hope I experience the same as the others when they did the double. I need to finish the Giro with high morale, then chill out, relax a little bit before heading to training camp to prepare for the Tour.”
It's worth noting that Pogačar has found his Giro experience rather more straightforward than that of Roche. There had, he told reporters on Monday, been no alarms and no surprise to this point.
“Based on the racing itself, it’s been so far smooth, not too many surprises,” he said.
It remains to be seen if weather conditions will ultimately allow the Giro to climb the Umbrailpass on Tuesday – “I have no idea what’s going on,” Pogačar admitted – but no configuration of stage 16 to Monte Pana is likely to trouble the pink jersey.
It remains to be seen, too, if Pogačar will chase more stage wins and a bigger buffer in the third week, or if he will settle for something marginally less emphatic than, say, Clerici’s final margin of 24:16 over Koblet in 1954.
Before taking his leave on Monday, meanwhile, Pogačar downplayed the idea that he is currently enjoying the most sparkling period of form of his career. “It’s one of the best moments of my career,” he said. “But for sure, the best moment of my career is victory in the Tour de France, no? Let’s see in one week and then in a few years how this victory settles – I mean, if it happens…”
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