Tadej Pogačar’s second rest day at the Tour de France will live long in his memory. “Don’t tell my nutritionist,” he said, “but we stopped at the bakery and I had one of the best brownies I’ve ever eaten in my life.” His energy stocks from a demanding but overwhelmingly successful opening fortnight of the 2024 Tour have been replenished, and he’s ready for one final big battle.
But before he goes about defending a three minute lead to defending champion Jonas Vingegaard, there’s another thing he needs to do. “I hope we can finish this press conference fast so I can chill out in my room and watch some great movies,” he quipped. Ever the gifted communicator, if the reigning Giro d’Italia champion worried that he may have offended some of the assembled press, he signed off 15 minutes later with four simple words: “You the best, guys.” Not true – answering rinse-and-repeat questions for 13 successive days while in yellow is tiresome – but the Slovenian is accustomed to this game, and he knows that the suckers on the end of the video call will fall for it. Like this author.
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He also knows that his performances in the Pyrenees at the weekend were astonishingly impressive. According to some observers, the best ever. As in, ever, ever. His ascent of Plateau de Beille on Sunday was three minutes and 40 seconds faster than Marco Pantani’s record almost 30 years ago, ridden at an estimated 6.98 watts per kilogram. Try pushing that at home for 30 seconds and you’ll exhaust yourself, but the UAE Team Emirates superstar pushed out superhuman power for just 10 seconds shy of 40 minutes.
“Yesterday I think we all witnessed one of the best performances on a climb ever,” he acknowledged, “and for me it also was. When I checked my numbers after, they were really crazy, especially the part where Matteo Jorgensen and Jonas went to the front, I had the highest numbers I ever did in my career.”
Vingegaard, according to the number crunchers at Lanterne Rouge, delivered the second-best climbing performance of all time, but he still finished more than a minute in arrears to Pogačar. But Visma are not done yet. “They showed their balls finally,” Pogačar chuckled, a reference to the now infamous comment from Remco Evenepoel after the stage nine gravel day. The same Evenepoel, by the way, who Pogačar applauded for not “giving a shit about anyone else – he does his own thing always.”
But Evenepoel, comfortably in third, is out of the running for yellow. It’s all about the comeback that may or may not come from Vingegaard. “We can see that Jonas came really prepared to fight for the victory,” Pogačar said. “Jonas said that he’s not giving up on his fight and that’s correct. It’s going to be a tough final week and we’re going to see fireworks for sure from everyone.”
Stage 17 has a summit finish, but really it’s all about Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and more specifically stage 19’s Cime de la Bonette and Isola 2000, stage 20’s Col de la Couillole, and stage 21’s mountainous final day time trial. “For sure they will pick one stage, not both,” Pogačar said of Visma’s predicted assault. “Either Friday or Saturday.”
Pogačar’s team of mountain domestiques is down one, Juan Ayuso at home with Covid, but it’s still fearsomely strong: Joäo Almeida, Adam Yates, Pavel Sivakov and Marc Soler. If current form persists, it will take a pestle extracted from a diamond quarry for Visma to break down a 25-year-old rare gem protected in a quartet-sized mortar. “We will try to do our own race, and try to defend so that they cannot do anything crazy,” Pogačar said. “We will have to be confident that we can go at our own pace. We climb with as many riders as we can and we have a super good team, but for sure they will try.”
The Bonette, which rises a Nils Politt over 2,800m, is where most expect Vingegaard to hunt down his prey. But the wannabee predator might not even get within his target’s vicinity. “I don’t know what I fear the most about the last week,” Pogačar pondered, before confirming the inevitable. “I don’t fear anything. I’m really looking forward to it.”
