“The possibility now is much, much greater" - Sean Kelly backs Tadej Pogacar to take historic Giro d'Italia/Tour de France double

A few months ago, Tadej Pogacar's hopes of becoming the first man since Marco Pantani to successfully complete the Giro d'Italia/Tour de France double looks ambitious. With rivals Jonas Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel and Primoz Roglic all suffering big crashes however, Sean Kelly is starting to believe.

“Well, it’s looking much more so than it was. The possibility now is much, much greater for winning Giro and Tour," cycling legend and former Vuelta a Espana winner, Kelly says in conversation with Velo. “I think for the other guys, there is a worry that it is going to hinder their preparation and their race programme before the Tour. How much is that going to affect them? We will see in the next few weeks, when you start hearing ‘he is back on the bike and he is doing X number of hours.’"

"As that information filters through we will have a better idea of how they are looking for the Tour. That’s something the riders and the specialists working with them don’t know the answer to yet. They will just take it week by week to see how things are developing," 'King Kelly' continues. "But, for Pogačar, I think his chances have improved.”

With his old rival Vingegaard still in hospital nearly two weeks after the horror crash at the Itzulia Basque Country, it's looking increasingly unlikely the Dane will even be at the Tour de France, let alone be challenging Pogacar for the Maillot Jaune. “Some individuals don’t need a lot of racing and they don’t need a lot of bike work before a big three weeker. Some guys need more. So each individual can differ a lot. But it is going to be a worry [for him], and it can be a really difficult situation when you count that number of weeks until the Tour,” Kelly analyses.

Roglic and Evenepoel also went down hard in that same crash. The Slovenian escaped fracture-free but covered in cuts and bruises. Evenepoel meanwhile needed surgery for a fractured collarbone among other injuries. “The collarbone is normally not so complicated,” Kelly said of Evenepoel. “If it is displaced you can have an operation and be back on the bike very quickly. But the shoulder blade can be slower one to heal, and to be able to get back on the bike and do the work you need to do.”

The question now is, can Pogacar have an injury-free ride into the Tour? “Last year he had that injury in Liège. I did say at the start of the Tour that was going to affect him as we got later into the race, when you get into the third week," Kelly recalls. "The team were talking him up, saying, ‘no he’s turning out the watts that he normally was, he’s in the shape to win the Tour.’ Of course, they’re going to say that so as not to dent his morale at all. But I think they knew that there could be a problem as you went into this final week of the race. And as I was forecasting, he started to weaken. He started to show that in the third week of the Tour.”