Tadej Pogacar will soon turn 26. Old – by nowadays standards. Yet there’s no doubt the Slovenian who has just won his first Giro d’Italia and third Tour de France this year still has a lot in the tank. And we can only wonder the heights his career can reach.
The UAE Team Emirates rider prefers to set out for smaller goals, there are still some races left to win this year… “I don’t like to talk about what can be in the future, what records can be broken,” says Pogacar at CNN Sport. Many see him as the main candidate to reach, and maybe even break, the mythical five Tours barrier, but the Slovenian doesn’t want to go fortune-telling. “But three now, three Tours de France and maybe 10 more years of my career if I’m well. So the odds are pretty good still to have five Tours de France, but that’s not the goal I want.”
The (only) man who can stop him is perhaps the Dane Jonas Vingegaard, winner of 2022 & 2023 editions. This time he arrived in far from ideal form due to a heavy crash in spring, but he still gave Pogacar a good run for his money.
“Jonas came on top two times in the Tour de France, and this made me even hungrier for the Tour and gave me bigger motivation,” says Pogacar, who already looks forward to their future clashes. “I think all of us on the top teams and the top riders, we push each other to the limit. I think we all have good relationships between each other, but when it comes to competing, we always want to beat each other and just go another level.”
Pogacar, who is capable of winning on any kind of profile, is often compared to ‘the Cannibal’ Eddy Merckx – winner of 11 Grand Tours, 19 Monuments and three World Championships. Yet the Slovenian doesn’t really like the comparison:
“I cannot compare myself to Eddy Merckx because that was not in my time,” says Pogacar. “It’s kind of flattering, but also at the same time, it can be annoying because you just want to be you; you want to do your own thing, do your own racing and go for your own history, not somebody else’s.”
Be the first to comment