Pogacar-proofing the Tour de France was never possible

When the Tour came this way in 1994, there were high hopes that the race would develop into a real contest. Tony Rominger had already given Miguel Induráin a late scare by winning the final time trial the previous year. Now fresh off a third straight Vuelta a España victory, he set out believing he could end the Spaniard’s long reign at the Tour.

The 64km time trial to Bergerac on stage 9 brought a swift end to that delusion. Induráin put exactly two minutes into Rominger and more than four into everybody else. The Tour hadn’t even reached the mountains, and it was already divested of all suspense.

“Tirano de Bergerac” went the pun in a jubilant Spanish press. Induráin, the most gentlemanly of tyrants, proceeded to run up the score still further across two days in the Pyrenees, stretching his buffer over Rominger to just under eight minutes by Luz Ardiden.

Ill and demoralised, Rominger abandoned on the road to Albi and the Tour trundled towards Paris as a foregone conclusion. A young Marco Pantani thrilled in the Alps, but everyone knew the race for the yellow jersey had already ended back in Bergerac. 

The Tour was usually an exercise in anticlimax throughout the Induráin era. The combination of Miguelón’s superiority against the watch and some underwhelming course design meant that the race was decided in the first time trial or, at the very latest, on the first big summit finish.

Lance Armstrong followed that template in his since-rescinded run of Tour triumphs, and Team Sky also tended to place a hefty downpayment on overall victory at the end of the first week each July. 

But in truth, it was simply an update on an old approach. Jacques Anquetil wasn’t necessarily the inventor of the strategy, but he perfected it in the 1960s, and every Tour dominator since has essentially followed in his wheel tracks. The most economical way to win the Tour has always been to build an early lead and gradually convince everyone else that resistance is futile.

Pogačar’s otherworldly superiority and the quirks of ASO’s route design mean that the 2026 Tour looks as though it has been decided even earlier than any of Induráin’s five triumphs. After his crushing display on the Tourmalet on stage 6, Pogačar already has a lead of 2:42 over Jonas Vingegaard and the atmosphere around the Tour has been decidedly flat in the two days since. 

Before the race, there were hopes that Vingegaard had been rejuvenated by his Giro d’Italia triumph, that Remco Evenepoel had improved by joining Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe and that debutant Paul Seixas would confirm his credentials over three weeks. 

Those things might yet prove to be true, but the brutal reality of this Tour is that Pogačar occupies a sphere entirely of his own, and the best versions of Vingegaard, Evenepoel and Seixas were always going to struggle to lay a glove on him. 

That should come as no surprise to anyone who watched Pogačar in the opening half of the season, and his remorseless approach to the first mountain stage of the Tour was entirely of a piece with his tactics across the entire campaign.

Pogačar’s fondness for the long-range solo attack isn’t about entertaining spectators or even about keeping himself amused. As counter intuitive as it sounds, it’s about finding the most straightforward way for him to win.

It’s tempting to put it down to instinct when Pogačar attacks from distance at the World Championships or at Strade Bianche, but, like everything in this data-driven era of cycling, it’s ultimately informed by the numbers.

By attacking early, Pogačar removes the variables from his path. Instead of getting hemmed in by tactical considerations, he can lean on his startling brute force to stay clear of chasers who are invariably a rung or two below his level. Once the gap reaches a certain point, he knows they will start racing for second place instead of marshalling a unified chase.

This week, Pogačar simply applied his Classics tactics to the Tour. The whole world knew that Pogačar would be the strongest on the way up the Tourmalet, but his UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad calculated that he would be faster than Vingegaard down the other side too. They also realised that Pogačar’s jarring raw power would allow him to continue gaining time on Vingegaard on the shallow climb to the finish at Gavarnie-Gèdre.

As absurd as it sounds, an all-out onslaught over the Tourmalet wasn’t really a gamble for this iteration of Pogačar; it was almost a guarantee. And it leaves him exactly where men like Anquetil, Induráin and Froome wanted to spend their Tours – way out in front with the best of the rest already thinking about the race for second.

Pogačar’s imposing lead and likely dominance will inevitably call ASO’s route design into question, and technical director Thierry Gouvenou has found himself defending the configuration of the Tourmalet stage. 

“The problem is not the course, but the difference between Pogačar and the others,” Gouvenou told TV2, rejecting the idea that the Tour should have effectively bypassed the Pyrenees following the Barcelona Grand Départ instead of placing a mountain stage so early in the race. “That would compromise the sporting challenge and the identity of the race.”

Gouvenou has a point. Back in 1992, when the Tour started in San Sebastian, the race all but bypassed the Pyrenees, but that only offered a stay of execution as Induráin proceeded to crush his rivals in the Luxembourg time trial on stage 9.

In 2023, when the Grand Départ was in Bilbao, the Tour featured two demanding Pyrenean stages in the opening week, with Vingegaard putting a minute into Pogačar at Laruns before the Slovenian struck back at Cauterets the following day.

Three years on, however, the pendulum has swung decisively in Pogačar’s favour in that rivalry. With that in mind, ASO attempted to Pogačar-proof the 2026 course, and they clearly believed they had done so when they trumpeted a Tour “in crescendo” at the route presentation last October. It feels like a hollow boast now.

The irony is that ASO have inadvertently contributed to the problem by trying to make every day of the Tour as interesting as possible. Back in the Induráin era, the Tour route typically featured a limited number of set-piece GC days – the two or three time trials and five mountain stages were islands amid a hefty quota of bunch sprints and a smattering of what used to be called transition stages.

With Jean-Marie LeBlanc as race director, downtime was built into the Tour itself. In an age before start-to-finish television broadcasts, there seemed to be a tacit acceptance that not every day needed to be a thriller. It didn’t really matter if a stage amounted to little more than nice scenery and a bunch sprint, it was all part of the overarching narrative.

The 21st century Tour allows itself no such luxury. In the manner of an algorithm-friendly streaming series, Christian Prudhomme’s Tours seeks out drama and cliffhangers wherever possible, always mindful of the need to produce easily consumable content on a daily basis to compete for eyeballs with the World Cup, Wimbledon and everything in between.

In 2022 and 2023, when Pogačar and Vingegaard operated on almost equal terms, that approach – that Netflix-ification of the Tour – paid off in spades. Pogačar’s superiority in the three years since, however, should surely spark a rethink. 

It’s anathema to ASO’s philosophy over the past two decades, of course, but it would be fascinating to see Pogačar try to win the Tour on a 1990s-style course. Imagine a Tour where Remco Evenepoel builds up a lead of minutes in a long early time trial and where Pogačar is then compelled to chip away at it on a limited diet of mountain stages. At this point in Pogačar’s era of plenty, it’s surely worth a try. 

But ultimately, Gouvenou’s instincts are probably sound. No matter what way the modern Tour stacks up, this all-conquering version of Pogačar would probably find a way to win it, and convincingly at that. 

As always, the riders make the Tour – but history shows that some riders make the Tour a foregone conclusion.