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Lance Armstrong warns Tadej Pogacar that greed for victories could turn out to be "the biggest mistake of his entire career"
CyclingSaturday, 20 July 2024 at 15:22
Tadej Pogacar's fourth Tour de France 2024 stage victory on Friday at Isola 2000 has caused quite a stir in cycling. Lance Armstrong even took a swipe at the upcoming Tour de France winner on his podcast The Move. The American ex-pro believes winning too many stages could come back to bite the Slovenian later.
"What we saw here is the biggest mistake of his entire career. I promise you that," Armstrong is very fierce. "The other teams don’t like this, the fans... Then you can say that the people back home in Slovenia like it, yes, but you are also riding against the Belgian Remco Evenepoel, against Jonas Vingegaard from Denmark. Two big countries in cycling. You are riding in France, with the French media. This is a huge mistake on his part."
"Then I hear the reactions: it's a race. Yes, that's true, but it's also a political campaign," the American continues. "Don't give people a reason to hate you. And I like to repeat that. Don't give them a reason to hate you. And if that's too much? Then don't give them a reason to dislike you. And even more important: Don't give them a reason to doubt you. Don't give them a chance to question your greatness. And he did do that, that was his biggest mistake."
Armstrong wants to add something to that later in the podcast. "I am really a fan of Tadej Pogacar," he says. "As a fan and supporter I said: don't do this, don't do this. I wanted the best for him. He could have caught Jorgensen and taken a stage. I have had many of these situations. On the Mont Ventoux I let Marco Pantani win the stage, but he was not happy with that. That felt like an extra blow to him. That didn't feel good either. But Pogacar has to look at the final podium in Nice. That is the real victory."
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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