Pogacar doesn't care about making enemies at Tour de France - Analysis

Tadej Pogačar has always subscribed to a Merckx-ian view of the world, namely that every bike race has a finish line and that the objective is to get there first. But for those weaned on the era of Miguel Induráin, who dealt out stage wins like he was Don Corleone dispensing favours on the day of his daughter’s wedding, there is still something jarring about a Tour de France winner who wants to keep everything for himself.

The question lands around the same time in all Pogačar’s Grand Tour processions, usually after the general classification has already been put to bed. Like clockwork, the question arrived in the press conference on Friday evening after Pogačar’s fourth stage win of this year’s race at Peyragudes, where he stretched his lead over Jonas Vingegaard beyond four minutes.

Vingegaard is a redoubtable foe, and he showed distinct signs of recovery in this mountain time trial after a crushing defeat 24 hours earlier. But the Dane and his Visma | Lease a Bike squad are already deep in Hail Mary territory, even with more than a week of the Tour to go.

The pertinent question at this point isn’t whether Pogačar will win the Tour, but by how much? And how many stages does he want to win along the way? Because at this startling level of dominance, it does seem to be simply a question of Pogačar’s own desire.  

With four summit finishes and a punchy Parisian finale still to come, he might even fancy a crack at the outright record for most stage wins in a Tour (eight), currently held by Eddy Merckx, Freddy Maertens and Charles Pélissier. With a total of 21 now to his name, he is even closing in on Mark Cavendish’s all-time record of 35.

Induráin, as everybody knows, never deigned to win a road stage during his run of five successive Tour victories. It was the most benign dictatorship the Tour had ever known. The Navarran governed by consensus rather than by decree. 

Even Lance Armstrong, since stripped of his Tour wins for doping, limited himself to time trial wins in 2000 and 2005. And while Bernard Hinault lauded Armstrong’s ‘no gifts’ approach in 2004, when he racked up five stages in the second half of the race, plenty more commentators found the whole thing rather distasteful. 

In the Pogačar era, however, such etiquette is no longer a consideration, and the Slovenian explained on Friday evening why he has no qualms about upsetting his peers by denying them stage victories between here and Paris.

“I’m not here to make enemies but it’s the Tour de France, you cannot just back off if there are opportunities for a stage win,” Pogačar said. “It’s the Tour de France and you never know when it will be your last day on the Tour. I will say it honestly – the team pays you to win, not to give it away.

“And there’s a big, big team behind you that supports you and works every single day of their career to support you and they come to the Tour to win the Tour. If I singlehandedly decided to start giving away every opportunity, I think my team would not be happy. It’s like this. If there’s an opportunity, you go for it: you cannot say no to a stage in the Tour.”

Tour champions of the past have understood the need to make friends along the way. When ONCE blew the race apart on the road to Mende in 1995, Induráin’s credit line saw a wide-ranging coalition of the willing suddenly spring into action to ensure he kept the yellow jersey.

Pogačar, on the other hand, is strong enough to do it all by himself in the here and now, and he was frank about the likelihood of friendships in the peloton enduring once this show comes to an end.

“In the end, when I finish my career, probably I will not speak to 99% of the peloton, honestly,” Pogačar said. “I will focus on my close friends and family when I finish my career.”

A decade ago, it would have felt almost heretical for the yellow jersey to express such a view. Chris Froome and Team Sky were generally sensitive to the idea that everybody was angling for a piece of the cake. Come the third week, they were often happy to let the breakaway help itself to a slice. 

Pogačar, by contrast, has no qualms about leaving the peloton to subsist on the crumbs from his table and nothing more. And, it should be noted, the peloton doesn’t seem to hold it against him, at least in public. When riders at last year’s Giro were canvassed about Pogačar’s dominance, there was more admiration than admonishment. 

Alessandro De Marchi, whose breakaway hopes were constantly thwarted by Pogačar’s team, saw no choice but to accept the current reality. Complaining wasn’t going to change anything. “We weren’t used to this in the past, but at the same time, things have been like this for a while,” he said. “Having a leader who is happy to leave opportunities for everybody else makes everybody calmer, but it’s not written in any rule that he has to do that.”

No, the old rules don’t seem to apply to Pogačar. Instead, he is burdened, if that is the right word, with an apparent duty to keep entertaining, keep winning and keep running up the score. When he crossed the line at Peyragudes, he was quickly facing questions about whether he wanted to complete a Pyrenean hat-trick at Superbagnères on Saturday. 

The man with the insatiable appetite for wins is perpetually condemned to look at tomorrow’s menu before he has even finished digesting today’s meal.

“I started cycling at 8 or 9 years old and I created my life around cycling – I found my closest friends and my fiancée on the bike,” Pogačar said. “So you need to enjoy the moment, enjoy the little things, not just the victories. Because when you win, people start already to think about the next big win or they say you’re winning too much. 

“You need to enjoy what you’re doing and what you’re sacrificing for. You need to live in the moment and not care too much about what everybody else thinks.”

In other words, even with four stage wins and a four-minute leads, Pogačar sees no reason to relent at this Tour. For the rest of the peloton, meanwhile, the Tour is still long - and that's the problem.