2024 #GirodItalia - Stage 🔟 🚩 Pompei 🏁 Cusano Mutri (Bocca della Selva) 📏 142 KM ⏰13:05 - 17:10 ⭐⭐⭐ #TheRoute | @ENIT_italia | @italia
"Completely unnecessary" - Jan Bakelants argues that Tadej Pogacar's chase of Narváez 'will leave him with few allies when he is under pressure"
CyclingTuesday, 14 May 2024 at 11:30
Tadej Pogacar looked to help his teammate Juan Sebastián Molano to victory on stage 9 into Napoli and did a leadout in the final kilometer which was key to bringing back Jhonatan Narváez - who beat him on stage 1. Jan Bakelants sees this as a deliberate act and believes it could come back to the Slovenian later on.
"He surprised me in the final on Sunday. Why did he have to draw the line to get back at Narvaez? That was completely unnecessary," Bakelants said to Het Laatste Nieuws. "Was it 'payback time' because Narvaez won the first stage? That seems like a punishment to me, because Pogacar has already won three stages. In this way, this seems like a middle finger to INEOS Grenadiers."
This is not what Pogacar and UAE argued, as Narváez directly put in jeopardy the possible victory from a sprinter and Juan Sebastián Molano who the race leader worked to help. However, it is very viable to believe that Pogacar was thinking of 'killing two birds with one stone' by taking a turn in the front of the peloton, but that this could earn him a bad reputation in the peloton.
"Pogacar doesn't need friends, he is strong enough, but these kinds of actions will leave him with few allies when he is under pressure," Bakelants, himself a pro for many years and teammate of many big star, warns.
However, he does believe that this Tuesday's stage is very well suited to the UAE Team Emirates rider and that the team should try to control the day to snatch a fourth stage win: "If I were sports director at UAE-Emirates, I would have a clear assignment for Pogacar this week: to destroy everything so that he has a six or seven minute lead on Sunday evening."
"The course of the coming days is in his favor: this is not the toughest week. Today is the perfect ride to strike again: only 142 kilometers long, with a climb at the end where he doesn't have to fear anyone," he concluded.
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