Professional cycling is back in the mainstream spotlight with the second season of Tour de France: Unchained on Netflix, this time with Tadej Pogačar among the riders featured.
The series is due to air on June 11, 2024, on the video streaming platform.
While the short English trailer for the second season did not show Pogačar, the extended version published on Netflix France's YouTube channel features interviews with Pogačar and new footage of the aftermath of Pogačar's crash in Liège-Bastogne-Liège and interviews from his home with partner Urška Žigart and in a studio.
"2022, I gave everything that I could, but in the end, Jonas was better," Pogačar says before Žigart describes Pogačar's stinging defeat at the hands of Jonas Vingegaard in 2022, saying, "It wasn't the easiest because it's this realisation 'Oh, I'm not the best anymore' ... but then it brought back the hunger that he really wants to prove that he is the best again."
Tour de France: Unchained debuted in 2023 as a series along the lines of the successful Drive to Survive Formula 1 show.
Drive to Survive gave F1 a huge surge in popularity, and it appears that Tour de France: Unchained has yet to do the same for cycling. The 2023 Tour de France had only a small increase in viewership over 2022.
The second season of Tour de France: Unchained will serve as a teaser for quite a different rematch between Vingegaard and Pogačar in July.
Pogačar just capped off a start-to-finish domination of the Giro d'Italia, winning by almost 10 minutes over Dani Martínez (Bora-Hansgrohe), while Vingegaard spent 12 days in hospital in April after a heavy crash in the Itzulia Basque Country left him with broken ribs, a collapsed lung and a fractured clavicle.
This year's Tour de France will also be the first time that Vingegaard will face off against former teammate Primož Roglič, who is now with Bora-Hansgrohe, and have Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quickstep) as a rival.
