Tadej Pogacar sits down to talk to the press in Turin and remembers how his love for the corsa rosa was born when he was a 15-year-old boy and his Komenda cycling club took him on an excursion to Trieste, just across the border from Slovenia , to see the last stage of the 2014 Giro, and that stage was won, oh miracle, by his compatriot Luka Mezgec, a sprinter who also appears on the bib list for this 2024. He doesn’t remember that much, or doesn’t mention it, of that that Giro was won in the snowy Stelvio by Nairo Quintana, the wonderful Colombian climber who this year returns to cycling and arrives at the Giro badly injured and downcast, with little hope of even winning a stage.
He also talks about Marco Pantani, “an inspiration, a myth, although I never saw him race”, which is inevitable in Italy because everyone talks about the Italian climber who died early, the last cyclist who won the Giro and the Tour at the same time. year, the challenge that Pogacar has imposed on itself, and it was in 1998, the year in which Pogacar was born, a sign from heaven, and 25 years ago, in 1999, on the way to great misfortune, Pantani did the most difficult one yet in the stage that ended up in Oropa. An alien, the Pink Pirate, with blood so oxygenated that it ended his dreams, and those of his typhosi, half of Italy, a week later in Madonna di Campiglio, expelled from the Giro in which he was sweeping.
And the second stage of the Giro del 24 arrives in Oropa, the first of the six fractions with a high finish, in a route not as hard as other years but with its usual dose of tappone alpine and dolomite last week (Livigno, Santa Cristina Val Gardena, Monte Grappa) and, a bit against the current, 70 kilometers divided into two time trials. A route more impossible for everyone than for Pogacar, the best climber, the best time trialist, the best on short slopes…”
The best cyclist of the century, perhaps in history, suddenly wakes up from a nostalgic dream and gets angry when they tell him that he is unique, that no rival reaches his ankles, that he is going to win the Giro of his debut with only one leg and all the stages that the body asks for. The young Slovenian (25 years old), who makes his debut in the Giro, the sixth three-week tour of his career, always on the podium (third in the Vuelta of ’19; first in the Tours of ’20 and ’21, second in those of 22 and 23), looks around, reviews the list of suitors, old Geraint Thomas (21 days away from turning 38; second in the last Giro), old Romain Bardet (33, second, far from the Slovenian, in Liège), the young Antonio Tiberi (22), the beardless Cian Uijtdebroeks (21), and tries to convince the real and virtual audience by stating that it is a lack of respect, an insult, not to take them into account.
But the laudatory recitation of names, past cyclists, future cyclists, paradoxically achieves the opposite effect in the minds of the fans, who know how much each one can give, and is transformed into an even more fierce self-affirmation of the great favorite. In stage cycling, in the Giro, there are two worlds. Pogacar lives in one, “a supernatural,” according to Javier Sola, his coach; in the other, everyone else.
What differentiates them apart from the fact that one always wins (10 days of competition in 2024, seven victories, one second and one third places) and the others yearn to finish second not far behind him?
Their speech differentiates them, which shows how one is not only the boss of cycling in the third decade of the 21st century, so different, but also enjoys the new obligations of directed training and repeated concentrations. Before, he trained with a bib number in some races; Now, training sessions are held without a bib as if they were races. “I love training hard and also having some rest periods between training because that’s how you improve, and if you only compete you get more tired. “I’m going to have more days of rest and more training, more structured, long weeks,” he says, reveling in what most people hate, training far from home, spending days and days on Mount Teide, sharing a room with the same colleague, watching the night go down. at seven in the afternoon, locked up surrounded by nothing, and only his cell phone and computer games to distract himself. “Plus, you’re more motivated when you’re running less and you’re training hard and you know your form is good. You watch TV. You watch the races and you want to be there, yes, but that is beneficial mentally, because when you get to the races, you are more eager for success and more motivated, and I am.”
Is 2024 the best Pogacar ever? Is it still improving?
“Yes, I think I’m better,” responds the Slovenian. “I feel more comfortable on the bike. I’m enjoying it more, I would say even more than before and, yes, I think that’s just it. And I think it’s enough to be better than the previous year.”
Pogacar speaks and scares away the fears of those who believe, because this is how it has always happened, that before physical exhaustion, it will be mental fatigue that ends his desire, that before squeezing his body, Pogacar, always so accelerated in search of victory, will exhaust your mind. Maybe so, but it won’t be in this Giro, surely.
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