Is Pogacar bored by his own dominance? - Tour de France analysis

We tend to associate the headiest acts of sporting genius with overwhelming emotions of joy. 

Think Diego Maradona waltzing through the England defence in 1986 as though the sheer thrill of playfully humiliating them was just as important as the serious business of winning a World Cup quarter-final. Think radio commentator Victor Hugo Morales happily immortalising the shimmering moment forevermore with his spontaneous outburst of “Cosmic kite, what planet did you come from?!”

But in time, the game becomes a grind, even for the great ones. Four years later, a wounded Maradona dragged a more cantankerous Argentinian team to an ill-tempered final through sheer muscle memory. The genius remained, but there was altogether more defiance than joy in the journey.

Tadej Pogačar isn’t quite at that juncture just yet, but the mood music around the Slovenian has shifted during the inevitable march towards his fourth Tour de France victory. The smiling, tufted youngster who seemed to bound up mountain passes and sprint for primes for the sheer hell of it has given way to a more jaded figure who knows that all this winning has also brought a whole lot more responsibility with it.

In his press conference on Friday evening, somebody noted Pogačar’s downbeat demeanour and asked if he was bored by the Tour or simply tired. Pogačar, like any serial yellow jersey wearer, could be forgiven for growing weary with the routine of fielding questions over and over again from the fourth estate, but his ennui seemed to extend to the bike race itself, which is rather different.

On stage 19 to La Plagne, Pogačar had looked keen on chasing stage victory, but on the final climb, once he realised Jonas Vingegaard was intent on sticking to his wheel, he seemed to give up on the idea. At the finish, like he had done on the Col de la Loze, he admitted that he wished the Tour was already over in practice as well as in theory.

Saturday morning’s edition of L’Équipe couldn’t help but pick up on Pogačar’s body language on and off the bike during the final days of this Tour. Gay Talese’ famous Esquire profile of Frank Sinatra was based on the premise that a minor cold for the musician could have ripples across the entire entertainment industry. So it is for Pogačar’s mood on the Tour. The smiling champion has been frowning more and more of late, and that, at least in L’Équipe’s eyes, has infected the entire atmosphere of their operation, which, let's not forget, is owned by their parent company.  

“His sulking, his grumbling, his general bad mood for several days has been clouding and disrupting the atmosphere at the end of the Tour de France,” wrote Alexandre Roos. “Because how can we be enthusiastic if the Yellow Jersey himself gives the impression of being bored, of living a painful experience, of sulking when he has achieved an exceptional race, four stage victories, and total mastery?”

One theory is that Pogačar is bored by the format. Grand Tours certainly call for a conservatism that runs counter to his racing instincts, but that fact of life didn’t seem as pressing a problem when he snatched the 2020 Tour at the death or when he smilingly dominated the next one from gun to tape. Even last year, when he won the final three stages en route to a crushing overall victory, he seemed well able to keep himself entertained across the three weeks.

Another theory relates to the relative lack of competition this year. Jonas Vingegaard, the Borg to Pogačar’s McEnroe at the Tour over the years, reckons he produced some of the best performances of his career this July, but that still didn’t allow him to trouble his old rival in the slightest. The same Vingegaard who dealt out such crushing defeats to Pogačar in 2022 and 2023, and who pushed him for the first half of last year’s race to boot, has, for 2025 at least, been relegated from a true rival to something more like an inconvenience.

“Jonas Vingegaard has been operating on a very high level on this Tour, especially in the third week, but it wasn't enough to tease or even stimulate his rival, who simply crushed him and then got bored,” L’Équipe wrote.

In other words, is the retooled, 2024-25 version of Pogačar so good and so superior that he is simply bored by his own dominance?

Perhaps, though, there might be more at play here. Pogačar is still only 26, but he is already in the seventh year of a career where the bar has been raised to higher and higher levels with each passing year. Like Mondo Duplantis, he keeps clearing that bar easily, but at a certain point, the thrill must start to fade. The show becomes business.

And, as Mark Cavendish experienced during his imperial phase in bunch sprints, Pogačar has reached a point in his career where he can only lose. He produced another Spring for the ages in 2025, but his late collapse at Amstel Gold Race, his crash at Paris-Roubaix and another near miss at Milan-San Remo were all, in their own way, more noteworthy than any of the races he won.

When Pogačar essentially put this Tour to bed with a crushing victory at Hautacam and another dominant display at Peyragudes 24 hours later, he immediately found himself being asked how many more stages he wanted to win on this Tour. His ‘failure’ – and that is the wrong word, of course – to add to that tally since has come as a surprise. A week ago, after all, it wasn’t absurd to wonder if he could beat Eddy Merckx, Freddy Maertens and Charles Pelissier’s record of eight stages in one Tour.

Even on Saturday in Pontarlier, with the Tour long since won, Pogačar found himself fielding questions about whether he was aiming to win the revamped final stage in Paris. The inference, as ever, was that if he wants to win it, then he probably will. If he doesn't, it will be news.

Pogačar deflected those questions, and he was also non-committal on the prospect of riding the Vuelta a España, which gets under way in four weeks’ time. It’s the one Grand Tour missing from his palmarès, and Jonas Vingegaard has confirmed his participation, but there was little enthusiasm in Pogačar’s voice when he said a decision would be taken when he returns home to Monaco after the Tour.

Physically, he clearly has Vuelta victory in his legs, not to mention another World Championships, and another Il Lombardia, and whatever else takes his fancy. But mentally, he and UAE Team Emirates-XRG will have to weigh up how much that costs him for the years ahead and whether it’s worth wringing even more out of their golden boy this season than he’s already given them. 

It’s not immediately clear if the Vuelta would fuel his fire or simply burn him out, but it’s striking that Pogačar has never ridden any stage race after the Tour in his career. The latter part of the year has generally been devoted to a more relaxed kind of racing. 

As Pogačar spoke on Saturday evening, it was hard not to think of a seemingly throwaway comment he made on the eve of the Critérium du Dauphiné, when he was asked about his enthusiasm for stage racing relative to his love of the Classics. “Unfortunately, I’m stuck with the Tour every year,” he said then, not with rancour, but as a statement of fact. 

The best bike rider in the world is condemned to ride – and usually win – the biggest bike race in the world, whatever it costs him, whether he’s happy or bored or defiant. Diego Maradona might have recognised the plight.