"Had Pogacar been fully focused, he might have avoided it" - Tyler Hamilton critical of world champion's inattentiveness after Tour de France crash
Cycling
Tadej Pogacar's quest for a 4th Tour de France victory was almost brought to a very premature end on stage 11 as the Slovenian was caught up in late crash with Uno-X Mobility's Tobias Johannessen. According to American former Tour de France stage winner Tyler Hamilton though, Pogacar would have had no one to blame but himself.
“He (Pogacar) lost focus for a split second, moved left while the group shifted right, clipped a wheel and went down,” explained the 54-year-old American in his Tour de France analysis for TV2.dk. “Did Johannessen move across a bit too quickly? Possibly. But had Pogacar been fully focused, he might have avoided it. It’s hard to say.”
Thankfully, Pogacar has seemingly escaped any serious injury, although he is battling on with some notable cuts and abrasions. Still, Hamilton believes Pogacar will be counting his lucky stars that it didn't end up much worse. “It’s more important to focus on what could have happened,” he says. “Pogacar could easily have been forced to abandon with a broken collarbone. He was lucky – very lucky – to walk away from it.”
Luckily, not only for Pogacar, but for the whole race though, that wasn't the case. “We’re fortunate the great showdown between him and Jonas Vingegaard is still on the cards," Hamilton concludes. "It would’ve been a real blow if he’d had to pull out.”
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Kieran WoodDeputy Editor-in-Chief
Kieran Wood is a sports journalist based in Wales and has been active in journalism since 2022. He regularly contributes to DartsNews.com and CyclingUpToDate.com, where he covers professional cycling and darts. In cycling, his work includes liveblogs from major races, including the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia, and La Vuelta a España, alongside race reports and analysis. He has also conducted interviews with professional riders.
His reporting spans the full racing calendar, from one-day classics to stage races, with a focus on accurate, real-time coverage and clear contextual analysis. For statistics, results, and historical context, he regularly uses resources such as ProCyclingStats. To support reporting on rider activity and training context where relevant, he also references Strava.
In his work, Kieran places strong emphasis on careful sourcing, editorial accuracy, and updating articles as new, verified information becomes available.
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- Good boy Obviously doesn’t need that much help dealing with pressure, as some have suggested. Wiser (and humbler) than many far further along their careers. About offering him the moon, recently someone came up with an explanation of the downfall of a football great (either referring to Maradona or Portuguese Ronaldo) saying it was kind of normal after coming back from the moon, except that others, including some who actually did go to the moon like Armstrong (Neil in case anyone is too switched off to realise) didn’t go through any of the same motions after coming back. A lot of how you deal with situations has less to do with the situation than with your character.Jumpyjohn07-11-2026
- I think that they're not really used to dealing with this type of incident in a cyclocross race, and the situation has been magnified because it was a race for a championship title. It's very unfortunate that the race had to be decided in this way.
santiagobenites07-11-2026 - Seriously why do they keep doing stupid things like this. Its one thing to relegate when the placings are minor, when the action is blatant. But when it is ambiguous, why dont they at least take advice from some higher up to avoid embarrassing themselves. This is similar to the Halland goal when his teammate was clearly offside and interfered in play and VAR gave them the goal. if you dont have evidence you cannot convict. Even for doping they have these rulesabstractengineer07-11-2026
- So all those who went to watch, including all from abroad, waled there, spent nothing? Most places hosting events of the sort manage to make it worthwhile. If it was so obviously fruitless, don’t you think by now they’d have run out of hosting candidates? Why do you think the Tour can command such high prices for departure and arrival locations? If it didn’t bring anything locally they’d have to pay to get authorisation to use cities.Jumpyjohn07-11-2026
- What a travesty ! That little deviation did nothing to impede Brand !frieders307-11-2026
- I also wanne beat Pogacar in the tour but it aint gonne happen. Jonas unfortunately getting dropped by del toro and seixas several times this TDF and jonas team is very weak and joinas on way down, it aint happening thats clear. its also clear it only happened cause Pogacar was hurt and had a broken wrist that time everytime both full strenght its not close we just have to be honest about it :/miguel07-11-2026
- They do this but literally let cars on courses to run over riders.mij07-11-2026
- Looking at that photo she appears to be several feet from her. I’m not sure how that impeded brands sprint.mij07-11-2026
- Lucky to not get disqualified
leedorney07-11-2026 - wtf dudemij07-11-2026
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