Stage 9 of the 2024 Tour de France route is one of the standout days on the profile. With plenty of gravel, the stage has drawn comparisons to one day race Strade Bianche but two-time Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar doubts we'll see the same style of racing.
"I think in the Tour everyone is going to be more careful, more cautious and act differently than a one-day race like Strade Bianche where you go all in and do not care about the next day," the Slovenian leader of UAE Team Emirates predicts in conversation with GCN. "I think it is going to be more easier racing, it is true gravel and I think it will be more defensive racing. It will be like the Roubaix stage which is more defensive riding than attacking."
"I don’t mind, I like Strade Bianche so we will see," he laughs. "It is not ideal, in such races a lot of things can happen so you never know what can go wrong, but it doesn’t frighten me. You still need to have good legs, have a team around you and you need to focus. I think it is pretty risky to have this kind of stage, but we risk it anyway every day, so I don’t think it changes too much."
Analysing the course as a whole however, Pogacar is liking what he sees. "Every year it is more or less the same, you start and it is hard. Every year you have more or less the same distance of climbing, the same time trials but I would rate it 9/10 maybe, because it also finishes where I train every day," he explains.
The finale, an individual time-trial in Nice rather than the traditional procession stage in Paris doesn't bother Pogacar in the slightest. "I like it," he admits. "I think it just adds one more day where you have to be 100% and really good. You need to have one of your best days on the last day, so for sure it is going to play a big factor."
— Pogi (@Pogacar7Pogacar) October 27, 2023
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