timeThat’s why Sunday will be the first time in 35 years that the Tour de France ends with a time trial. The 1989 race ended on a cliffhanger on the Champs Elysées when Greg LeMond started at a disadvantage and beat France’s Laurent Fignon by eight seconds. The slimmest advantage in this great game.
In the following years, organizers feared that any attempt to repeat this stage would be doomed to failure compared to the results of that race, so they stuck with the tried and tested road race stage format, ending on the Champs Elysees on tour.
Eschewing Paris and finishing in Nice during the Olympic preparations offers the chance to break with tradition, but even so the chances of a repeat of the 1989 final appear slim. Tad Pogacar prepares for his third career Tour de France after claiming a fourth stage win on Friday’s mountain stage through the Southern Alps, with the 33.7km between Monaco and Nice likely It will be a coronation, not a dramatic comeback like Pogacar winning his first Tour title in 2020.
Zoom out to see the significance of Sunday’s time trial in the context of the past three weeks of racing and look at the bigger picture, a coronation parade filled with glitz and bling. Pogacar will become the seventh man to win the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France in one year, joining Fausto Coppi, Jacques Anquetier, Eddy Merckx , Bernard Schino, Stephen Roach, Miguel Induran and Marco Pantani. It was a monumental feat that many observers thought would be impossible in modern times.
Winning a Grand Tour is difficult enough both physically and mentally, but since the calendar changed in 1995, it has become even more difficult to win two in a row, with the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and Tour de France. The Spanish races are spread more evenly throughout the season, with a five-week break between the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France instead of the previous two or three weeks. The approximate amount of time a male cyclist stays in peak condition is usually around six weeks, which means the plan is to get back into shape during the Giro d’Italia, fall back before the Tour de France, and then hope the form doesn’t break out at the Tour de France disappear.
It’s a daunting enough proposition, but now, as the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France stretch on for three months, coaches are increasingly doubtful about the possibility of winning both races, given the need to compete in such a short period of time Reached the peak of two states within two months. Furthermore, the overwhelming importance that the Tour de France has gained on the cycling calendar over the past 30 years means that in the vast majority of cases, exclusive groups who believe they have the ability to win in France do not dare risk compromise The key goal is to try to win the Giro d’Italia earlier in the same season.
Pogacar bucked the trend, partly because, having already won two Tours, he could afford to risk failure at the Tour, but also because, when he decided to compete in this year’s Giro At the time, the working assumption was that Jonas Vingegaard would outclass his rivals in the Tour, as he did in 2022 and 2023, making the Giro a worthy alternative Target.
Pogacar may reflect on Sunday night that he, like all his predecessors, relied on luck to win his Grand Tour double. During this season, you will definitely open the sliding door and on one side you will definitely find that on April 4th, on the descent of the Alto de Olaeta, about 40 kilometers from the end of the fourth stage of the Tour of the Basque Country, you will definitely You will see a wide right-hand bend.
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A horrific crash into a concrete gutter that left Vengergaard and Evan Naple hospitalized has significantly impacted the preparations for the Tour de France for Pogaca’s two biggest rivals. If both men, as well as Primoz Roglič, had negotiated the corner safely and made it into the Tour, the past three weeks could have been very different.
The double should open another door for Pogačka to achieve an even more elusive goal: a potential treble of Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and world road race titles, by Merckx (1974) and Roche (1987) in men’s racing, while Annemiek van Vleuten achieved it in men’s racing.
The 2024 title race will be held in Zurich at the end of September and due to the amount of climbing it is considered to be a good fit for Pogacar, who won bronze last year on a technical track in Glasgow that was more suitable for the eventual race win by Mathieu van der Poel. He would be under serious scrutiny if he played for Slovenia, but that hasn’t bothered him in most games in recent years.
