“The Tour will be over in three or four days” - Marc Madiot expecting Tadej Pogacar Tour de France rout
Cycling
In just a few days, the 2024 Tour de France will get underway in Florence. After some interrupted preparation for his rivals, UAE Team Emirates' Tadej Pogacar starts as the strong pre-race favourite, despite having already won the Giro d'Italia this year.
With the likes of Jonas Vingegaard, Primoz Roglic and Remco Evenepoel having their seasons disrupted by a very nasty crash at the Itzulia Basque Country, Pogacar is probably the only one of the main Maillot Jaune contenders that comes into the race at 100%. As such, Groupama - FDJ's team boss Marc Madiot is not expecting anything even resembling a general classification fight over the next month.
“The Tour will be over in three or four days,” Madiot says in conversation with French outlet L'Equipe, previewing the 2024 edition of cycling's biggest spectacle. "Pogacar will break things apart and blow out Vingegaard. In his place, that’s what I’d do to be sure he [Vingegaard] doesn’t get back on top form. So in the third week, just like in the Giro d’Italia, they’ll be handing out ‘exit gift vouchers.’"
On his own team, Madiot also commented on the surprise late addition of Lenny Martinez to the team alongside David Gaudu in a two-pronged leadership. “And why not [send Martinez to the Tour]? He was in our long list that we sent to ASO," the Frenchman says. “Race programs aren’t set in stone and we discussed it with the sports directors and with Lenny, who said he wanted to go to the Tour. That was the way the cookie crumbled.”
“We got the green light from the doctor, who said that he had recovered, it was all going fine for him. He hasn’t raced so much. He’s won a lot but he’s not raced so much,” Madiot concludes, not deterred by Martinez's tired display at the recent Tour de Suisse. “Then the Tour de Suisse is one thing, the Tour de France is another. If he ends up being in the gruppetto, it’s not so serious, we just want him to strike some high notes.”
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- In Track and Field, there's Usain Bolt in the sprints and Kenya's Kipchoge in the marathon. Though Bolt can quite easily beat Kipchoge in the 100m dash, he probably won't even finish a marathon. Tadej won't beat Mathieu in a sprint, yet he wins the TDF while MVDP languishes in 50th place. Both are great champions in their respective fields, but my admiration goes to Tadej for trying.FredMan23-03-2025
- They went into the race as co-leaders!frieders323-03-2025
- He can win that sprint if he plays it right but leaving tha gap was ridiculous ! A spring after 6+ hours isn't a guarantee for MVDPfrieders323-03-2025
- The climbs are steeper on Flanders giving Pogi the advanatge as we saw before when he won!frieders323-03-2025
- VDP is best in a short sprint, so Pog was purposely leaving a gap in hopes that VDP wouldn't have enough to sprint for 310 meters at the end of 300 KM. Kwiatkowski did the same thing to Sagan at that same point and won because of it.acem8223-03-2025
- Ganna started winning the occasional end of season sprint a few years ago. It's been fun watching him change from a TT specialist into something more.RidesHills23-03-2025
- hey look, an insinuating question from 2 years ago! I mean, sure, announcers mentioned tail wind, but whatever. That wasn't going to matter today, not with the 2 best classics riders of the past many generations (you have to go back to the 70s to see two people dominate like this, and even Merckx and de Vlaeminck never managed to win 2 each in the same year, the way Pogacar and Van der Poel have done in the past 2 years).RidesHills23-03-2025
- I like my statistics: Pogacar and van der Poel have won 13 of the last 18 Monuments and are tied at 7 each (MvdP won his first long enough ago that it doesn't show the more recent utter domination.) Oh, and the last 2 road world championships. Oh, and one of them also won the last Tour and Giro, while the other won the CX and Gravel world championships. I mean, anyone reading this site knows all this, but it's worth being amazed by it all every now and then.RidesHills23-03-2025
- Congratulations to all three on the podium. The final seconds reminded me of E3 a few years back, when tiny little Pogacar had no chance against van Aert and van der Poel, but that was just the last few seconds of an incredible race. Everything from the launch on the Cipressa to crossing the line was amazing.RidesHills23-03-2025
- All 3 of them went to doping control
Front24223-03-2025