Tadej Pogačar clinched a historic Giro d’Italia-Tour de France double on Sunday. But even while the Slovenian star was visibly delighted to take another giant step towards all-time greatness in the sport, the UAE Team Emirates leader also denied that he was especially interested in studying his own achievements in terms of pure cycling statistics.
Speaking in the winner’s press conference late on Sunday evening, Pogačar was told that amongst other new records, his lead from stage 4 to the finish in Nice was the longest unbroken period in yellow in a single Tour de France in 63 years. Did he regret letting go of the yellow jersey for a single day, he was asked - as happened after he ceded the lead captured on stage 2 to Richard Carapaz on stage 3 in Turin, prior to regaining it in the Alps - and did breaking records or making history give him a particular motivation in cycling?
Pogačar instantly turned the question on its head, saying that in fact while he had always been interested in statistics and records, it was other riders’ that caught his attention, not his own.
“Let’s talk about Mark Cavendish’s record for a second,” he told reporters by way of example, referring to the Briton’s 35th stage win in the 2024 Tour de France. “This is impressive, everybody wanted him to win more and he never gave up, he went for it, he went for history in the end.
“At first he was not thinking about the record, but then in the last few years when he was winning in the Tour again, I think he did. Right now, though - me, I’m always interested in seeing other statistics and records, but I‘m not thinking about mine.”
Warming to his point, Pogačar said he had had no second thoughts at all about seeing how the 2024 yellow jersey ended up on Richard Carapaz' shoulders for a day - in the process, indirectly helping Ecuador to their first-ever leader’s jersey in the Tour de France.
“He deserves it,” Pogačar said. “He did a super-good Tour and got the polka dot [King of the Mountains] jersey as well. It was an incredible performance for him, especially as I heard he’d been sick before the Tour and couldn’t prepare for it well. So chapeau to Richard, he did a great Tour and I don’t regret anything at all.”
Pogačar underlined this argument when he was asked by another journalist about the fact that quite apart from the Giro-Tour double, he is now the youngest-ever rider to win the Tour de France three times.
Aged 25 years and 10 months and just the eighth rider ever to claim a third overall victory in the Tour, Eddy Merckx is the next youngest in the record books, having taken his third win at 26 years, 1 month and 1 day. Bernard Hinault was 26 years, 8 months and 5 days old when he reached the same milestone, Jacques Anquetil was 28 years 6 months and 7 days old and Miguel Indurain was 29 years and 9 days old.
It's surely hardly coincidental that all four of the riders following him in that particular statistic have also won five Tours de France, but Pogačar reiterated his lack of interest in records - at least for now.
“Like I said, I don’t like to see myself in the records, statistics, history,” he continued. “Maybe in 30 years I will look at this, but right now I want to enjoy this moment and even if I never come back to the Tour de France again, I will be satisfied.”
Although it would be hugely unlikely that Pogačar actually opted to call time on his career right now, there are plenty of other records he has now broken regardless, quite apart from being the eighth rider to a Giro-Tour double and the first rider since Bernard Hinault in 1979 to take at least six stage wins en route to overall victory. (The all-time record for a Tour winner remains eight, for Eddy Merckx in 1970 and again in 1974).
Pogačar’s total of 39 days in the Giro and Tour leads is now the greatest number a rider has ever spent heading an overall classification in a Grand Tour in a single season, two more than Eddy Merckx’s previous top total of 37. Furthermore, the UAE Team Emirates leader is the first Tour winner ever to win the last three stages of a single edition, something only previously achieved by Charles Pélissier in 1930, although the Frenchman finished ninth overall that year.
Lastly, Pogačar’s and Jonas Vingegaard’s joint run of podium finishes in the top two highest spots was already a record, and is now extended by another year. But although his rivalry with the Dane was one of the highlights of the 2024 Tour, as Pogačar told reporters, he took pleasure in fighting all the other contenders, not just Vingegaard, in what he considered one of the most dramatic editions of recent years.
“This year’s Tour was really special for me, but coming into Tour against Remco, Primož Roglič, Jonas and others, expectations were high, for a big battle and a big showdown. We threw so many punches at each other that everybody showed balls at some point, each one of them from first to last. It was a great show, and in the end, I can be happy and proud that I came out of this battle as the winner. But the whole of cycling can enjoy this moment, it’s been a beautiful edition.”
Asked if he could single out a moment from the Tour de France that he valued the most in the last four weeks, he answered, “It’s super hard to do this. Except for being on the podium today, I think the stage on the Galibier” - his first victory of six, taken solo ahead of his rivals in the crunch first-week Alpine stage - “was the moment where it gave me the most hope, the biggest confidence.
“So maybe the Galibier pops into my head, but right now all the images from all the stages are running in my head, so it’s hard to concentrate and have a single moment as the best.”
How Pogačar got into a position to win the Giro-Tour double will doubtless be analysed fully in the weeks and months to come. But in the short term at his winner’s press conference, he also revealed that in a sense the starting point for that process was 24 months old, going all the way back to his first Tour de France defeat at the hands of Visma-Lease A Bike, in 2022.
“For sure this year my preparation went really smoothly. But in the 2022 Tour, I had one bad day, Jumbo and Primož [Roglič] and Jonas really cracked me really well. They threw really great punches at me and I cracked. So that was one bad day, one mistake in that year’s Tour, and I never could bounce back," he said.
“So I was really motivated and really eager to come good in 2023, and I won Flanders and Amstel, Flèche, Paris-Nice before that and my confidence was sky-high. But then I broke my wrist in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, I had to start to ride the bike again only one month before the Tour, so it was really shit preparation and in the end, I cracked mentally, physically and it was not a good environment around me.
"I was really down after that and to bounce back this year with the perfect preparation. I must say I was super happy I could pull it off.”
Arguably the riskiest point for Pogačar this season came between the Giro and the Tour, when handling that month’s break is critical in being able to rebuild well for July from the efforts of May.
“It was pretty simple,” Pogačar said. “I tried to relax and recover, I had a lovely time with Urška [Žygart], my girlfriend, which helped me to switch off. Then we went to Isola to start preparing, she was preparing for the Tour de Suisse and Nationals where she did a super-good job, she was top ten in Suisse and won two Nationals jerseys. This was the kind of preparation we both wanted and we gave each other great support in this month between Giro and Tour. Then I had a couple of hard training days and that was it.”
No Vuelta a España but a possible Triple Crown
After the Tour, though, logically, Pogačar is now looking to ease back considerably and his plans, barring the Paris Olympics and World Championships, look to be comparatively lowkey.
“I’m super tired, thanks for caring,” he joked when it was put to him that he never seemed to run out of energy, “that’s why I want to see some family, my friends, stay with Urška, recharge my batteries. The last four months it’s been full gas for the Giro, full gas for the Tour, so much time staying away from home. And I’m tired.”
However, to return to the records one last time, Pogačar concluded by saying he had no intention of trying to go onto the Vuelta a España, which could have seen him go down as the first rider in history to win all three Grand Tours. That, at least in 2024, is not going to happen.
“For sure, it crossed my mind to do the Vuelta, people tell you to go do this or that, so of course it was there. But I’m trying to let it go in one ear and out the other. For me, putting a cherry on top of this season would be to have a really nice August, to relax a bit, to prepare well for the World Championships and then give it my all there.”
Should he win in Zurich, of course, he’d become the first rider since Stephen Roche in 1987 to take the historic ‘triple crown’ of Giro, Tour and the rainbow jersey. But even just looking at what he's already achieved this season, many would argue his place amongst the greats of the sport, not to mention the record books, is already more than guaranteed.
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