2023-12-18 19:37:25
Double ration for the most gluttonous of the peloton: Tadej Pogacar will aim for victory at the Tour of Italy and the Tour de France in 2024, a double achieved by only seven champions in the entire history of cycling. “It has always been a dream to race the Giro. I am older now, I think I am capable of handling two Grand Tours, I am ready for a new challenge,” underlined the 25-year-old Slovenian, confirming on Monday his first participation in the Giro (May 4-26) against the press gathered in La Nucia, southeast of Spain, where his UAE team is preparing for the season.
Pogacar had wanted to discover Italy for a long time. But his early triumphs at the Tour de France from his first two participations in 2020 and 2021 catapulted him into another dimension where he first had to ensure during the big mass of July where he remains on two runners-up places behind the Dane Jonas Vingegaard.
Aiming for victory in the same year in the Giro and the Tour de France (June 29-July 21, 2024) has become an almost impossible challenge, as the sequence of these two three-week races is so demanding for the organizations. Only seven riders in the entire history of cycling have managed to collect the pink jersey and the yellow jersey in the same year. Only sacred monsters and there are quite a while already: Fausto Coppi, Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Stephen Roche, Miguel Indurain and Marco Pantani, the last to have passed the two, in 1998, six years before his death.
“He needed a new challenge”
“Tadej is 25 years old, he needed a new challenge and he is ready to take it. It’s ambitious but if anyone can do it it’s him. He’s the greatest runner I’ve seen in my entire career. He is special,” insists Joxean Fernandez Matxin, sports manager of the UAE team.
To achieve this, he disrupted the program of a runner who usually enjoys shining from February to March and on all terrains. “We reduced our schedule at the start of the season,” said Matxin. So no more classic UAE Tour, Paris-Nice or Tirreno-Adriatico but also the Tour of Flanders, brilliantly won this year. Pogacar is expected to start his season at the Strade Bianche in Italy on March 2, before continuing with Milan-Sanremo, the Tour of Catalonia and perhaps Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
“There will be a lot of pasta and pizza on the menu next year,” joked the Slovenian who will spend a lot of time in Italy, also for reconnaissance in view of the Giro. There, “he will clearly aim for victory”, according to Matxin, before cutting off a month to train at altitude to prepare for the Tour de France which remains unmissable.
“It was never considered that I would skip the Tour, I know how important this race is for me and my team. But one day I plan to give up because everything doesn’t revolve around the Tour either,” explained “Pogi” whose objective is to include the three major Tours in his list of achievements by the end of his career – he finished third in the Vuelta in his only participation in 2019.
A very solid team at his side in the Tour de France
The Slovenian will have revenge to take on the Grande Boucle, which will start from Florence in Italy. For this his team, a bit like Jumbo-Visma, will build a real “dream team” by announcing on Monday that it intends to field big names like Adam Yates, Juan Ayuso, Joao Almeida, Pavel Sivakov, Tim Wellens and Nils Politt as lieutenants.
“At the Tour I want to regain the number 1 place,” insisted Pogacar. That Pogacar chose 2024 to attempt the Giro-Tour double is an all the greater challenge since the Slovenian also intends to interfere in the fight for the gold medal at the Paris Olympic Games on August 4, even if he believes that the course does not really suit him.
He is also eyeing the Worlds in Zurich on September 29, another of the major career goals of the “little cannibal” with a ferocious appetite. Who, if it were up to him, would compete in “the three great Tours in the same year”.
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