It’s an ominous warning to his rivals, and a major departure from the usual downplay of form by bike race favourites – Tadej Pogačar has said he has “never felt so good” on the bike ahead of the Tour de France.
If we thought we were going to have to play a cagey game in order to find out whether the UAE Team Emirates rider has been left tired by his emphatic Giro d’Italia victory in May, we were wrong, it seems. Speaking on his team website, the affable Slovenian has answered the question for us.
“It’s looked like I’ve made a step forward since the Giro,” he said, “and my shape is even better than what I expected. I’ve done some good training, and I’ve tested my legs a little bit and to be honest, I have never felt so good on the bike.”
There’s always the chance he could be bluffing – though that doesn’t feel like Pogačar’s way. And there is also the danger of reaching peak form too early to consider.
Even so, for his big GC rivals Jonas Vingegaard, Primož Roglič and Remco Evenepoel, this is not going to make for easy reading. Particularly given that all of them have missed significant chunks of their early season through injury after being caught up in a mass pile-up at the Itzulia Basque Country in April.
Pogačar himself has experience of injury ahead of the Tour of course – breaking his wrist in last year’s Liège-Bastogne-Liege – and he talks about that in the UAE piece, which covers a lot of ground. It’s another passage from which Vingegaard et al might want to look away.
“Last year was totally different because of the injury,” he said. “No one prepares like that for the Tour if they’re not injured, and so many things around me didn’t go well after the crash in Liege.”
He doesn’t dismiss his rivals though, giving their form a little light scrutiny and pronouncing them by a large, good to go.
“Jonas was really injured, really hard, but I think he’s going to be fine,” he says, adding: “We saw with Remco and Primoz that they were in really good shape at the Dauphine, maybe with Remco it was a little too soon to be flying 100% but Primoz was in really good form. I think they are all going to be at a top level at the Tour.”
Lastly, he answers the question in the minds of many – will he attack straight out of the blocks?
“I mean, at the Giro it worked well, so we can see,” he teased.
Saturday could be interesting.
