Tadej Pogacar is now his own biggest rival - Tour de France analysis

The Tour de France always provides an overarching story, but sometimes the narrative is driven by plot and other times it’s driven by character. This year’s race was the latter. From start to finish, this Tour was a Tadej Pogačar joint.

On the opening weekend, he was sprinting with Mathieu van der Poel up a hill in Boulogne-sur-Mer. On the final evening, even after the clock had already stopped on the general classification, he was jousting with Wout van Aert on the final cobbled climb up Montmartre. 

In between, Pogačar and his UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad dictated the terms of engagement on more or less every day of racing. Visma | Lease a Bike made repeated attempts to discommode Pogačar, and they occasionally isolated him, but – a feed zone fracas aside – they never really got under his skin.

Jonas Vingegaard tried gamely, producing fine displays at Mont Ventoux and on the Col de la Loze, but his old sparring partner now seems to be completely immune to the same combinations that left his head spinning in 2022 and 2023.

The most damning statistic for Vingegaard is that, in three weeks of racing, the only time he gained on Pogačar came in the form of two meagre bonus seconds on the final mountain stage. The duel continues in the record books – for the fifth year in a row, Pogačar and Vingegaard occupied the top two places overall – but it scarcely existed out on the road. 

It was hard even to lean on the old cliché and say that Pogačar’s biggest rival was the Tour itself, because the course didn’t throw up a single stage or situation that he couldn’t handle. The inclusion of Hautacam, Mont Ventoux and the Col de la Loze led some to claim that ASO were seeking to ‘Tadej-proof’ the route as though he were Tiger Woods in the 2000s. 

But technical director Thierry Gouvenou knew as well as anyone that such an idea was fanciful. This startling, stratospheric iteration of Pogačar would have won this Tour even if the course were concocted of 21 criteriums around supermarket car parks. 

No, Pogačar’s superiority was such that his biggest rival was himself. Some wondered, in vain, if Pogačar might, as he did in 2022, burn too brightly too soon and then find himself short of energy in the second half of the race. In truth, that never looked likely to be a problem for the rebooted, Javier Sola-coached version before us now, and so it proved.

Yet if physical fatigue didn’t seem to trouble Pogačar, it was hard not to detect more than a hint of mental weariness as the race drew on. L’Équipe wasn’t the only publication to wonder if Pogačar was mildly bored by his own dominance or perhaps finally tired of the persistent pressure to keep doing Pogačar things, day in and day out. 

Maybe more than anything, Pogačar was a touch fed up of the Tour itself. It was apparent even when he told L’Équipe that he would be back next year.

“The Tour is the biggest cycling race in the world, but it also causes a lot of stress for the riders,” Pogačar said. “I would like to skip it for a season to try my hand at other races, but I know that will be difficult. So, yes, you will see me at the start of the Tour next year to defend my title, most likely.”

Still, like a crooner locked into a long-term residency in Las Vegas, Pogačar knows that he is obliged – by his team and perhaps by the economy of cycling itself – to line up every July and belt out the greatest hits to the rafters.

And so, on the final Sunday in Paris, even though the GC battle was long since decided, Pogačar found himself racing for the final prize of the race on the laps over Montmartre. There was nothing to gain, beyond the prestige of winning in Paris, but there was plenty to lose on the rain-soaked cobbles. A crash could have generated the absurdity of losing the Tour after the clock had stopped, but that didn’t deter Pogačar. Perhaps it drove him on – finally, there was a touch of jeopardy about his Tour.

When Pogačar accelerated on the final ascent of Montmartre, it looked to all the world as though he was going to channel Bernard Hinault and win on the Champs-Élysées in yellow, but then a curious thing happened.

Wout van Aert responded in kind and, for the first time on this Tour, the unthinkable happened. After three weeks of impregnability, the fatigue – physical, mental, moral – finally told. One metre became five, and then it became fifty. Pogačar was dropped. 

Sagely, he relented on the descent, as though he finally realised that the thrill of this particular contest didn’t warrant the risks he was taking. He rolled onto the Champs-Élysées and across the line in fourth on the stage, with a fourth Tour victory in his back pocket.

As ever with Pogačar, there’s no time to dwell on the victory just past. As soon as he was off the podium, he was being asked about his intentions for the Vuelta a España – no decision yet – and his desire to equal Miguel Induráin, Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault and Eddy Merckx’s record of five Tour wins. 

“Not really,” Pogačar said when asked about the record. “I’ve reached the point where I proved to myself that I could achieve great results. Now I’m trying to focus on other things in my life while still enjoying cycling. And if I break any historical records, that would be great, but it’s not my goal.”

In the same interview with L’Équipe, Pogačar intimated that he might not necessarily see out his contract with UAE Team Emirates-XRG, which runs until the end of 2030. “I don’t think I’ll stop right away, but I don’t see myself continuing for too long either,” he said, hinting that the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, shortly before his 30th birthday, might be the point when he starts to consider winding down the operation. The thought will surely alarm his paymasters at UAE, but they can’t say they haven’t had bang for their buck from their franchise player over the past seven seasons.

“I think he’s really at his peak. The question now is how long we can keep him at this level,” team head of performance Jeroen Swart told L’Équipe. “It’s no longer a question of age, but mainly of motivation.”

That looks like the biggest conundrum facing UAE in the months ahead: Pogačar is fast running out of worlds to conquer.