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Tadej Pogacar has admitted “there will always be doubts” about his credibility as a clean rider after dominating the 2024 Tour de France to win his third yellow jersey.
Pogacar blew away his rivals one last time on Sunday to win the stage 21 time-trial from Monaco to Nice by more than a minute. It was his sixth stage win of the Tour – the most collected by the champion since Bernard Hinault in 1979 – and capped a historic Giro-Tour double.
His dominance prompted some doubts on social media about the credibility of his performances, and that talk intensified last week after an investigation by Escape Collective revealed how elite teams are using controversial carbon monoxide rebreathing equipment in altitude training camps.
The equipment could be used for performance enhancement, although it is not banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency and three teams – Visma, UAE Emirates and Israel Premier Tech – insisted they use it only for measuring training performance. Both Pogacar and his main rival Jonas Vingegaard said it had only been used for diagnostic purposes.
It also didn’t help when Lance Armstrong, who was stripped of his seven Tour titles for cheating, warned that Pogacar should reel in his attacking style so as to avoid speculation. “I would advise him to lay low a bit more,” Armstrong said last week. “Sometimes you have to think about perception and image.”
Pogacar, who has never failed an anti-doping test, has been rigorously tested throughout this Tour, where the International Testing Agency has conducted what it called “one of the most comprehensive anti-doping programmes” ever implemented, collecting around 600 blood and urine samples through the race.
“There will always be doubts,” Pogacar said on Sunday after winning the time-trial. “Because of cycling before my time, in any sport, if someone is winning, there’s always jealousy and haters ... I tell you now, it’s not worth it. Taking anything to risk your health is stupid.”
No rider has completed the Giro-Tour double since the late Marco Pantani in 1998, and Pogacar became only the eighth rider to achieve the feat.
“I think this is the first Grand Tour where I was totally confident every day, even in the Giro I remember I had one bad day I won’t tell which one,” Pogacar said. “This year’s Tour de France was just amazing and I was enjoying it since day one until today.”
Pogacar has suffered at the hands of his Vingegaard in the past two editions, who collected back-to-back yellow jerseys in 2022 and 2023, but a serious crash in April hampered the Dane’s preparation and he could not live with Pogacar’s strength on the climbs.
Vingegaard revealed he would not ride the Vuelta a Espana after giving everything at the Tour so soon after his injuries.
“Under normal circumstances, I would be disappointed with my Tour de France,” Vingegaard said. “But, after everything I’ve gone through, I can’t be disappointed. I would have loved to go a bit further, but it is what it is. I would like to come back to the Tour de France and win it again ... I believe the yellow jersey is the most beautiful jersey in road cycling.”
