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"I admire that Pogacar is willing to make efforts to win this Tour from a far" - Bernard Thevenet enjoys the unique rivalry between Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar
CyclingFriday, 12 July 2024 at 10:00
The duel between Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard on Wednesday made for one of the more entertaining Tour de France stages in a long time. Two-time Tour champion Bernard Thevenet claims he has never seen a rivalry such as the one between the winners of last four editions of Grande Boucle.
"When Pogacar attacked, we were afraid he was about to kill the overall standings," he told AFP on Thursday. "But then we saw that Vingegaard was up to it and not only that, but that they were ready to work together to get rid of the other two."
But Thevenet feels this rivalry has been somewhat put aside in face of the threat of a broader field of favourites. "You got the feeling they wanted a mano-a-mano like the good old days, so that later they could fight it out between themselves," Thevenet smiled.
"Evenepoel and Roglic may have expected to find an ally in Vingegaard," he explained. "But it hasn't turned out that way at all, instead he allied himself with Pogacar." The pair ended stage 11 in a photo finish, 25 seconds ahead of the chasers.
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The Frenchman subscribes to a popularly held belief that Wednesday's stage proved Vingegaard was back to top form. "At the end, we suddenly saw that Pogacar had to climb up out of his saddle because he was tired, very tired. Did he do too much when he attacked or what? Maybe he felt superior to Vingegaard and was stunned by how Vingegaard stood up to him. It certainly bodes well for the future of this Tour in the Pyrenees and the Alps," Thevenet added
He also said that both the unique rivalry and Pogacar's modus operandi were attracting a new generation to cycling. "There have been other rivalries between two riders, but what makes this one different is this - what I admire is that Pogacar shows such willingness to make efforts to win this Tour from a greater distance. Pogacar going for it in the first week is good for cycling and it's bringing lots of new fans to cycling," Thevenet concluded.
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- Exactly who, Joey, is "they"? Flimsy, illogical conspiracy theories aside, it is in no one's interest (financial or otherwise) to "drive away small local events." Major cultural and macroeconomic factors are reducing ridership, but there is no "they" in this context.verve82520-12-2024
- 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