Tadej Pogacar admitted that his own creeping fatigue was perhaps his biggest threat during the Tour de France this year, particularly after he had built a four-minute lead on Jonas Vingegaard following the race’s three stages in the Pyrenees.
Speaking in a brief press conference after his fourth Tour win, Pogacar said: “We were in the lead and we had quite a big gap, so we were comfortably in yellow, but yeah, I was tired in the last week.
“For now, I don’t want to speak about what went wrong,” he added, “but for now I want to enjoy this moment with the yellow jersey in Paris.”
Although his rivalry with Vingegaard was less intense during this year’s Tour than it has been in the past, Pogacar admitted that the pair now have renewed respect for each other. “Jonas opened up a bit more this year,” he said. “He comes [over] and we talk about stuff, general stuff. I quite like the guy and I like to race against him.
“Today we were speaking at the start line about how incredible it was, the last five years, battling each other and pushing each other to the next level. We spoke about how we can be privileged to have this competition between each other and how it makes us grow even more.”
Vingegaard admitted that his own performance had not been as consistent as he had hoped. “I can agree that on some stages I have had the highest level that I have ever had,” he said, “and in other stages I have had the lowest level for many years for me.
Jonas Vingegaard congratulates Tadej Pogacar on the podium in Paris. Photograph: Bernard Papon/EPA
“It was a bit more that I had a few bad days. I am better than I ever have been, but it’s shown me that I can still have a few bad days.”
If he had suffered from ennui, Pogacar managed to hide it for most of the race and certainly in the final stage in Paris, even if his visible weariness during the Alpine stages had drawn criticism from some parts of the French media.
“Burnouts happen in a lot of sports, mental burnout, physical burnout,” he said. “I think cyclists are a bit too obsessed with training. We always try the hardest and everybody wants to train more and more.
“You see riders with fatigue too early in the season, the team needs you to race, race, race and you keep going and you never really recover. Burnouts happen all the time and it can happen to me as well.”
While the four-time champion is looking ahead to a rumoured Grand Depart in Slovenia in 2029, his rival is already turning his attention to trying to win this year’s Vuelta a España, the final Grand Tour of the year and one that Pogacar seems unlikely to ride.
“I think first of all, I will do an easy week and from there, you can start training again,” Vingegaard said. “It’s more when you feel fresh and able to train again. There’s not a lot of time, but I did it two years ago and it worked out pretty well.”
