Tadej Pogacar anticipates fireworks: "Tomorrow is the queen stage of this Tour for me"

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.