Tadej Pogacar is the big favorite to win the 2025
Tour de France. He is aiming for his fourth title, with Jonas Vingegaard once again as his main rival. The Slovenian from
UAE Team Emirates - XRG spoke at the pre-race press conference, and
CyclingUptoDate was there in Lille to listen to what he said.
Q: So here we are. The last five Tours, we won three, Jonas won two. It never happened that two guys finished first, second, in four years. How do you see it now? How do you see this battle?
A: Yeah, I think the last five years were quite intense with me and Jonas and the others as well. Yeah, I think this year is more or less the same like the last couple of years. It will be interesting to see if we can exchange it again or not, but you never know with the new guys coming in as well. I think he is in great shape and I am also looking forward to race against all the others on different terrains.
Q: So today you are the big winner, this year you had an amazing season. Do you see any aspects where Jonas is better than you right now?
A: Thank you, it has been a great season so far perfect. Going here to the Tour as one of the favourites it is an honour, I am pleased and I hope I can live up to the expectations. I think he is one of the best, if not the best, but he can also do great times, sometimes better than me, sometimes worse than me.
Q: What do you think of those first 9 stages that you see as an opportunity to make time?
A: As always, the first week of the Tour is one of the most intense nervous weeks. You can quite easily lose the Tour de France in the first 10 days until the first rest day. I think I can see it also as an opportunity.
There are a lot of hard finishes, tricky finals, not so many pure sprint stages and one TT also. I don't think my goal should be to get done in the first week, but as always you say, in the first week you just need to take care and not screw it up the whole Tour. You can just focus and save the legs for the last week and see how it goes. Without any headlines, you survive the first week.
Q: Do you feel unsafe at some times?
A: I mean, I feel unsafe many times while riding a bike. It's not a very safe sport in my opinion. I mean, just going out and training in the traffic, where more and more people are nervous in the cars, in the traffic. So you actually risk life every single day in the outdoors, training. And then you come to a race where everything is closed, just you and 170 something guys on the start line, basically know each other pretty well, racing against each other all the years.
And I think, of course, there's always going to be crashes and moments where you don't feel safe, but I think it's always been like this. Big cities or famous places for cycling, there is a lot of fans. But normally there can be some problems sometimes.
It's been in the past, but without the fans, this sport would be really boring, I think. So that's what we need to accept. It just feels great when you ride past so many people, so many fans, when they scream your name or your team.
It gives the pleasure of riding in such a big race. The fans, they make the race so beautiful to pass riders. You know, today people are pretty much reminded of each other.
Q: Especially in Mountains, what do you think is the most challenging stage that you'll have?
A: We've had quite a lot of mountain top finishes. The last week in Alps, I think, is the hardest. One stage (18, ed.) is with around 5500 and a half elevation of climbing, just three climbs, so three massive climbs. That's the hardest one. But it doesn't mean that it's the worst one.
Q: In the past, we've seen you going for these intermediate sprints for bonus seconds. This year, it's only been possible in the finish. Will you change your way of racing due to this? Or does it annoy you?
A: No, I didn't even pay attention to that much. Of course, I think bonus sprints always bring another stress to the GC riders. Especially in the final. Me personally, I've been super close with this rule. But I sense a lot of riders don't understand the rule. Or it's not clear. What exactly is the punishment or whatever.
There's been this year many yellow cards. But as a rider inside the peloton or any other rider, I can tell you that there's many times there can be more yellow cards for nonsense things. Sometimes it's just what you see on the TV. They have to punish the rider if something bad happens on the broadcast. I think it's a little bit inconsistent rule. But maybe it's not that bad at all. We'll see how it will go here in the Tour. In the future, maybe it will stick and work well. But for sure, there has to be improvements or consistent playing of this rule.