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Bernard Hinault sticks his neck out against criticism of Tadej Pogacar: "As soon as it's a foreigner, you always have to raise doubts"
CyclingSaturday, 20 July 2024 at 11:14
Bernard Hinault is a five-time winner of the Tour de France, ten-time Grand Tour winner, World Champion and much more... All of this has led him to an absolute legendary status within cycling but the fact that he is French further aided his popularity. The former pro rider believes that if Tadej Pogacar were French he would have a lot less doubts and criticism than the ones that are currently being said of him.
"I am disgusted... Why do we always express doubts? Let's stop asking ourselves questions all the time! It's ridiculous... Do we have proof?" Hinault said in a column for Ouest France. The sport has a dark past and so it is reasonable that some fans have doubts over the best riders in the world, specially at the Tour de France where many are at their very best level. After Sunday's Plateau de Beille stage, where Pogacar, Vingegaard and Evenepoel all beat Marco Pantani's record, more skepticism has emerged.
Most of it because Pogacar took three and a half minutes out of the Italian's previous record, and has raced the climb in just under 40 minutes, averaging almost 7W/Kg; numbers that a decade ago were barely reachable for a climb of half the length. Every year that passes the climbing level is higher in the peloton and that is very visible at the Tour. The likes of Pogacar and Vingegaard are reaching climbing levels never before seen in the sport, part of what is making it a legendary rivalry.
Hinault has been in similarly dominant position decades back, but he defends the Slovenian who despite being incredibly popular, still has his fair share of skeptics over social media who doubt the legitimacy of the UAE Team Emirates rider - specially in a week where an investigation from Escape Collective has brought forward the possibility that carbon monoxide rebreathing may be used by World Tour teams to improve their performance in altitude camps.
"If I were in his place and I had these performances, would there be suspicion? No. As soon as it's a foreigner, you always have to raise doubts," Hinault hits back. "You have to put all the assets on your side to win, and Pogacar is doing what it takes to win"
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- And our virtual platforms allow us to "ride" famous place that we can't get to in person, which is a pretty fabulous aspect of this weird weird sport.RidesHills19-12-2024
- Which off-season are you referring to? The one after he won the Tour of California? The one after he won 3 stages and was on the podium of the Vuelta? The one after TJV screwed up, never put him away, and lost the Tour on the time trial? We've seen the guy hit the wall, lose energy, nearly fail, and lose races ("I'm dead") more than once. He's got a visible threshold and his fueling regimen is a clear weak spot. You'll need more detail to make this more than under defined insinuations .RidesHills19-12-2024
- Interesting analysis. And yet, I'm in the US, and at a recent wedding reception as a group of us older folks had to stand at a certain place to keep track of a thing, we got to talking, and every single one of us had a favorite rider, a favorite circuit of races, a moment when we fell in love with the sport, and a joy in the complexities of it all. None of us knew about the other's fandom until that moment. It's wonderful that these are my brothers-in-law, and we now know to talk about this when the spouses aren't listening. Point being: there are fans all over, and for US folks, the loss of GCN+ has been huge. As so often, it's the media bottleneck that matters more than anything else. Look at F1 in the US before Netflix, as an example.RidesHills19-12-2024
- On the one hand, what he says is trivial. Of course it's genetics. It always is, in any sport. That's just obvious. Look at Mondo Duplantis, whose sprinting speed is key to his pole vaulting, for example - he's just plain faster than other vaulters and good at the rest of the event as well. In cycling, even when you take the most genetically weird group of people and give them amazing training, some will be better than others, as well. Distributions are distributions and there are outliers and that's just that. Pogacar's body is built for this kind of thing, it seems, with him only recently having had to pick up skills that others have used all along. I'm still inclined to believe that these folks are using entirely legal means to arrive at their shockingly good performance, given how more senior riders kinda complain about (or at least comment on) the regimens and control over the nutrition and exercise and all that. And in every population, there are edge cases of truly exceptional behavior.RidesHills19-12-2024
- And it’s likely going to get worse. They are going all-out to drive away small local events which are where a lot of new riders come from. They want fee income and Olympic medals. That’s all.JoeyB19-12-2024
- Oh Lordspock12319-12-2024
- Interesting suggestion, fo you think testing Tadej’s (or Bolts’ or so many others’) parents would have given us a preview of his potential then or what criteria do you have to pick parents with?Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- Even amateur teams suffer this sort. But this is also largely due to the precarious sponsorship, in very few sports do you find kit with so many sponsors having to be integrated and changing so regularly.Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- I think it’s pretty obvious what was responsible for destroying interest that used to be there.Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- This has been stated repeatedly, MVDP for CX, road and if it already counts, gravel. Lavreysen for track. I expect as a cycling fan you’ve heard of them?Mistermaumau19-12-2024