It is close to 10pm in Paris on Sunday, and Tadej Pogačar is tired. We all are. He has spent the last 21 stages trying to win the Tour de France, then he has been tasked with defending his time gap against attacks, mind games, and brutally challenging mountain stages. With every single thing the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider has had thrown at him, he has responded in the way that only a champion can. There is a reason why the yellow jersey he will take home with him is not his first, but his fourth. Pogačar has been here before.
He knows how the podium ceremonies go, he knows about the handshakes, the interviews, and the posing for photos. Remarkably, in a sport so challenging, winning the Tour is now second nature for the Slovenian rider. He appreciates the gravity of his achievements – of course he does – but there is no denying that winning is gradually losing its sparkle for Tadej Pogačar. This is normal, this is natural, but it is imperative that we take note of it.
The sentiment became clear in the final two Alpine stages of the race when Pogačar admitted he felt it was time for the whole Tour de France debacle to end. He told journalists he was ready to head back to his “normal” life and do normal things, away from the stress, pressure and anxiety that comes with defending a leader’s jersey in a Grand Tour. If you compare the 26-year-old’s blasé response to leading the biggest bike race in the world to an inconsolably emotional Kaden Groves’ reaction after winning stage 20 on Saturday, for example, you would see the stark comparison. Is the magic slowly dwindling? Is Pogačar becoming too used to winning bike races?
In his post-race press conference, a few minutes after the Tour de France concluded with a wet and wild stage around Paris, Pogačar admitted that he has considered the possibility that the pressures of Grand Tour racing might all get too much for him.
“I'm at this point in my career that if I do burnout I would be happy with what I achieved. To be serious, burnouts happen in sport, in a lot of sport, mental and physical burnout,” Pogačar said.
“We do train a lot, I think cyclists are a bit too obsessed with training, and we always try our hardest. Everyone wants to train more and more. You see some riders’ fatigue too early in the season, and the team needs you to race, race, race, and you keep going in this circle, and you never recover. Then you get to October and finally a break, then in December, you do it all again. Burnouts happen all the time, and it could happen to me as well.”
The world champion’s comments raise the question: how many more Tours de France does Pogačar have in his repertoire? It’s true that he has looked unassailable in this year’s edition of the race, but cycling is fickle and changeable. Dominance never lasts forever. Will he now head to the Vuelta a España to aim to complete the Grand Tour triple? Pogačar argues that it is too early to say.
“Anything is possible, but right now I’m not thinking about any other races,” he said. “It’s getting late, and I don’t want to think about other races right now. We can talk about the Giro, Vuelta in the future.”
Pogačar is measured, polite and clearly media-trained in his answer. This is the type of professional athlete he is, in every sense of the word. However, there is an undertone to his comments: stop asking me what is next. Appreciate what I have already done.
Perhaps that is the answer. Perhaps it is not about how much longer of the Pogačar-era there is to come, but instead it is about looking back and considering the gravity of his achievements on the day of his fourth Tour de France victory. He was the favourite and he shouldered the pressure. Winning was the expectation; losing would have been the story. When you have won as much as he has, this is life as a professional bike rider. The fact that Pogačar needs a moment of quiet, that he longs for the bike race to end, is understandable – he carries a burden that most of us can not fathom. His ability to shoulder it and pedal on, regardless of the circumstances, is what makes him the bike racer he is.
“Right now I have no clear goals,” the 26-year-old concluded in Paris. “Maybe the World Championships this year, maybe Lombardy, but no other clear goals. Enjoy the moment.”
