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Tadej Pogacar anticipates fireworks: "Tomorrow is the queen stage of this Tour for me"
CyclingFriday, 19 July 2024 at 09:58
Tadej Pogacar has looked little tired in all honest throughout this Tour de France, but he managed to take it a bit easier and save the legs for the decisive mountain stages remaining. Today at the Tour de France the yellow jersey prepared himself mentally for what he considers to be the toughest stage of the race tomorrow.
“A day like today feels good, but you can never really relax. It was too much up and down for that, it was still quite a tough day. But of course we had everything under control, so I'm happy”, Pogacar said in a post-race interview. UAE Team Emirates did not push the pace hard to control the day today, and the Slovenian was able to spend the day in the peloton without major stress or mishaps taking place.
Tomorrow on stage 19, the riders will climb up to Isola 2000 at the end of the day into another summit finish. “I know it well there. I don't know if we've decided yet what the queen stage is, tomorrow is the queen stage of this Tour for me. I like Col de la Bonette, and on Isola 2000 I trained a lot in the month before the Tour. I'm looking forward to racing there.” This is the ski station where Pogacar had an altitude camp ahead of the Tour, and so without a doubt he will know these roads like the back of his hands.
He is in the lead to win the Tour de France, but the race is still not over. Tomorrow's stage will be about defending the lead over Jonas Vingegaard that he's built over the past two and a half weeks. “I have a lead of three minutes. Let's build on that and see if we can maintain that same difference. We'll think defensively first and then on the last climb we'll see how the legs feel. But we have to expect something, it's the queen stage. It's a stage that you want to win. We're going to see fireworks, and maybe some changes in the classification," he concluded.
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- Froome wishing to ride the Vuelta...he won't even be selected for the team!frieders320-12-2024
- Keep telling yourself that Remco but you not only have Tadeg to beat but Jonas!frieders320-12-2024
- Seems farfetched - I agree. Mas has beaten him once. Giro d'Emillia I think - 2022mobk20-12-2024
- Barring injuries, by the time Pogacar's dominance fads there will be lots of new young talent. Pogacar is about 1 1/2 years older than Remco. That's nothing.Sweep20-12-2024
- I actually don’t find that too impressive. In my later forties I did similar figures for a 3.5% gradient as a total nobody with no wind assistance. Am sure there’s margin for improvement there, especially looking at all the names on that list.Mistermaumau20-12-2024
- Jonas', was 6 years agospock12320-12-2024
- The race where he overnight suddenly turned nuclear after being packfodder at best for several years. His Sky days after that Vuelta and Pogačar’s last season shall remain the darkest post Lance stuff cycling has witnessed. Good riddance Froome.
UltimateOpportunist20-12-2024 - Finishing the Vuelta seems to be a reasonably attainable goal. Getting on the team to do that will be the more difficult challenge.
santiagobenites20-12-2024 - To be fair, he has now stated his fuel regime had been corrected and the results concur.Mistermaumau20-12-2024
- You can look at things mathematically sometimes to get a better understanding of performance distribution. To be an elite cyclist you may need a number of qualities, say 8 some of which are quite obvious (engine), some more debatable (body type). If you look at distribution you’ll get a whole bunch with 6 or 7 very elevated values but 1-2 not so perfect and occasionally someone will pop up with all 8 really well developed. However, statistically, for that to be a given the chances drop by about an order of magnitude each time so in general for each 2 at the top you’ll have 20 at the next level, 200 at tge 3rd, 2000, etc. I don’t see the actual distribution as so weird, we have a few too many right at the very top level but statistically it’s just because for the past 15-20 years there wasn’t really anyone clearly standing out, level 1 was bunched with level two.Mistermaumau20-12-2024