Tadej Pogacar was beaten, and it is rare enough to be highlighted. By winning the Giro on his first participation in May, Jonas Vingegaard became the first active rider, winner of the three Grand Tours. To join him and become the ninth in history, Tadej Pogacar will compete in the Tour of Spain (from August 22 to September 13), which he only started once at the start of his career, in 2019. Enough to achieve a Tour-Vuelta double which looks like a formality for him, while only Chris Froome (in 2017) has achieved it since the event was moved from spring to the end of summer in 1995.
If he did not attempt it last year, after his Giro-Tour double in 2024, it is above all due to extreme weariness after his fourth coronation on the Grande Boucle. “I am counting the years that separate me from retirement,” he said on the sidelines of a criterium organized where he grew up, in the town of Komenda, near Ljubljana. A little more moderate when justifying his absence from the Spanish roads in a press release from his team, he explained simply: “After such a demanding Tour, we decided that it was better to take a break. The Vuelta is of course a race to which I would very much like to return. I have wonderful memories of 2019, but now my body is telling me to rest.”
Now the Slovenian ogre is back in his best mood: refreshed, but not satisfied. By winning his fifth Tour de France hands down, he didn't really have to draw on his reserves. "His physical preparation was focused on the month of July, as it should be, and the Vuelta is simply an addition, explains the performance director of his UAE-XRG team, Jeroen Swart, in an interview with CyclingNews. It is not necessarily an element that dictated the preparation before the Tour. But the race calendar was designed to allow him to maintain the mental freshness necessary to compete in the Vuelta if he decided to do it definitively, once the Tour. finished."
Compared to last year, he returned to competition three weeks later, skipping the Tour of the United Arab Emirates - although dear to his team - before the Strade Bianche. He also skipped the Amstel Gold Race and the Flèche wallonne, even if he added the Tour de Romandie to his program after Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and arrived on the Grande Boucle fresher than ever, with a meager total of 16 days of racing.
The departure from Monaco may also have weighed in the balance for the Slovenian, resident of the Principality. Prince Albert II even allowed himself to reveal the secret of his participation during a visit to the Tour: “Tadej Pogacar said he would be at the start, so we will see,” he said. Tadej Pogacar could take the red jersey from the inaugural nine-kilometer time trial in the streets of Monaco, or the next day in Manosque, after 214 hilly kilometers, or failing that on the third day, upon arrival at the Font-Romeu station. Before giving it up with a fumble, as he usually does, to protect his teammates.
He will be, as always, very well accompanied, with climbers Pablo Torres, Pavel Sivakov and Jay Vine at his side, in addition to Joao Almeida, himself able to aim for a podium in the general classification. Without Jonas Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel, nor Paul Seixas, the competition will be modest anyway, on the scale of a Grand Tour. “I don’t see anyone capable of standing up to Tadej in the general classification of the race,” says Alberto Contador, three times winner of his national tour, in an interview with AS.
“The Vuelta is generally less tricky than the other [Grand Tours]: the Giro, for example, because of the weather, and the Tour especially because of the tension.”
The Slovenian should have no trouble beating his compatriot Primoz Roglic (Red Bull-Bora hansgrohe), winner of the 2019 edition which saw his younger brother blossom, with a third place in more than three stage successes. Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost), unleashed on the Tour, is this time fully aiming for the general classification, but his team has set the final podium for him, aware that Tadej Pogacar is untouchable.
Felix Gall (Decathlon-CMA CGM), Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek), Enric Mas (Movistar), Tobias Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility) will certainly have the same wisdom. “When Tadej accelerates, I prefer to turn in the other direction. I turn around and wait,” summarizes Italian climber Lorenzo Fortunato in an interview with Tuttobiciweb.
Sure of his strength, Tadej Pogacar did not even go through the traditional training to prepare for this deadline. "We skipped altitude training," explains his team's performance director, Jeroen Swart. "It's a cognitive effort to go away to do that, and we're already well into the year. When we talk about the transition between the Giro and the Tour, it's still early, we're more fresh. At this stage of the season, we know that we want him to simply recover, both mentally and physically. During a training course, he There is also this mental effort to be made."
Without an opponent of his rank, nor of the one just below, Tadej Pogacar should be able to win while managing his efforts, choosing his stages according to his desires and his morning legs. “The second part of the race could be an opportunity to adopt a slightly more cautious approach and thus spare yourself for your other objectives,” admits Jeroen Swart. “It would be a smart way to proceed.”
He will indeed have one last major objective left this season: to win, in Montreal, a third consecutive world champion title (September 27), a feat only achieved by Peter Sagan between 2015 and 2017. The sequence, which Alberto Contador judges "completely compatible", was only achieved victoriously by Remco Evenepoel, in 2022. On the other hand, Tadej Pogacar would become the first rider in history to win the same year the Tour de France, the Vuelta and the world championships.
