Tadej Pogacar wins his third Tour de France

Tadej Pogacar won his third Tour de France, closing a two-year parenthesis in which the yellow jersey had settled on the shoulders of Jonas Vingegaard, this Sunday at the end of an unprecedented finish in Nice with a time trial won by the UAE rider himself.

With this third overall victory, Pogacar has now surpassed his main rival and winner of the last two Tours, Vingegaard, in the ‘Grande Boucle’ list of winners. He finished a creditable second overall after suffering a serious fall in the Tour of the Basque Country in April.

‘Pogi’ caught up with Louison Bobet, Philippe Thys has now surpassed Greg LeMond in terms of the number of Tours, and is just two behind legends Eddy Merckx, Miguel Indurain, Jacques Anquetil and Bernard Hinault, all of whom have completed five Tours.

Two editions, those that mediated since its last victory in the Tour, in 2022, Until this Sunday, it is too long a time without winning the most prestigious stage race in the world for a rider of Pogacar’s talent and ambition, whose limits are far from being seen.

– Giro-Tour double –

The prodigy from Komenda is collecting victories and records. The last of them was sealed this Sunday when he became the first rider to win Giro and Tourthe first two major stage races of the season, something that no one had achieved since the Italian Marco Pantani in 1998.

With Sunday’s victory in the second time trial of the Tour, the Slovenian has now achieved six stage victories in this edition, which places him close to the dominance exercised in 1970 by Merckx (8 stages) or Hinault’s seven in 1979, which are added to the six he scored in the Giro.

Pogacar sealed victory in the final time trial in the Mediterranean city – close to the Paris Olympics compulsory – with 1 minute and 11 seconds less than Vingegaard and 1 minute 14 seconds less than the white jersey Remco Evenepoel, third in the general classification, whom he beat respectively in the general classification by more than six and nine minutes.

Owner of the race from start to finish, Pogacar wore the yellow jersey at the end of the second stage, giving it up in the third to Richard Carapaz, and put it back on in the fourth so as not to let go again.

His displays on the descent of the Galibier, or in the Pyrenees Pla d’Adet and Plateau de Beille, or again in the Alps at Isola 2000, have somewhat diminished the suspense over the final victory, and the doubt at each stage was not so much whether Pogacar would attack, but in which kilometer would I do it, leaving the rest of the ‘roosters’ of the peloton without a response, who could only watch resignedly as the Slovenian opened a gap at a hellish pace.