Tadej Pogacar on Jonas Vingegaard: "We will meet in the other races as well and have a rivalry that will go in the history books"

Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard have been the headliners of the Tour de France's overall classification fight for three years in a row now. The past two seasons saw the Dane take the win, but had epic battles in the French mountains. Tadej Pogacar believes their rivalry will go down in history books.

"Our rivalry is more based on Tour de France only, but I think in the future we will meet in the other races as well and have a rivalry that will go in the history books," Pogacar told France24 at the Saitama Criterium. "I'm really happy to have such a rival against me, we have great respect for each other. We are good for a show for the next couple of years." This is a statement of a friendly battle with the Jumbo-Visma leader, Pogacar has talked in similar fashion about Mathieu van der Poel with whom he has battled with in the classics. 

However this is a different type of battle, one that has over the past two summers taken place over three weeks. Pogacar has suffered one bad day in both of the past Tour editions which led him to fall to second place, but he is set to return in 2024 once again to try and retake the title. Not only Vingegaard, but he is also likely to face Primoz Roglic and Remco Evenepoel among others in what is a difficult and very tricky route.

Pogacar admits that to beat Vingegaard will be a very difficult task however he is confident that he's able to do it. "I'm pretty confident every year but there are so many things that can go wrong or can go right. You just need to keep faith and never give up because we all work super-hard," he adds. "We all know that we can win it and we just need to fight and fight and play the games and try to win."