Slovenian is the first rider since 1998 to win the Giro d’Italia/Tour de France double
Slovenia's Tadej Pogacar of UAE Team Emirates celebrates as he crosses the line to win the 21st and final stage and the overall victory in the Tour de France. Photograph: Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP via Getty Images)double of the 21st century in swaggering style, with victory in the final time trial of the 2024 Tour, in Nice.
In the time trial from Monaco to Nice, Pogacar beat Vingegaard by 1:03 and Evenepoel by 1:14 to win overall from the Dane, champion in 2022 and 2023, by 6:17.TV View: Clare and Cork deliver a game that ‘we should just shut up and watch’Pantani’s Giro-Tour double came 25 years ago, in a chaotic and corrupt era, blighted by unrelenting doping scandals.
Unlike Ackermann, however, Pogacar was still hungry. The 25-year-old, even with the Tour already won, appeared as insatiable and invincible as ever and rode the time trial as if his life was at stake. Of course, he won, yet again. Merckx started seven Tours in his career and won five, while Pogacar, still only 25, has already won three out of five. Merckx spent 97 days in the maillot jaune while the Slovenian has already worn the Tour leader’s yellow jersey for 40.
Yet even Pogacar might accept that fate played a hand in the outcome of this year’s race. Vingegaard’s Visma Lease-a-bike team, winner of all three Grand Tours in 2023, has so far been a dramatically depleted force, blighted by injury and illness. This, however, is the Tour and inevitably, there are the usual doubts from ‘haters’ as Pogacar labelled them, freely expressed as soon as a performance is deemed extraordinary. Pogacar muddied the waters himself when asked about his team’s use of the noxious-sounding, but legal, ‘carbon monoxide rebreathing’. One day he didn’t know what it was, but by the next, he was an expert.
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