A glance back over his shoulder, a push, and then Tadej Pogacar was able to raise the five outstretched fingers of his right hand in the air. On the penultimate day of the Tour de France 2024, the Slovenian took his fifth stage win on the Col de la Couillole. He held a relatively narrow lead of seven seconds. He made it clearer with his other victories.
On the Galibier it was 37 seconds, in Pla d'Adet 39, on the Plateau de Beille 1:08 minutes, by which he outpaced Jonas Vingegaard. On the ascent to the Isola 2000 ski station it was even 1:42 minutes. Pogacar was fuelled by a special bundle of motivations. He felt challenged by Visma | Lease a Bike. "They had two men in the escape group and forced us to take the lead. As a thank you for the great work of my team-mates, I also wanted the stage win," he explained. He was further spurred on by the fact that Matteo Jorgenson, the most important helper of his main rival Vingegaard, was at the front. Jorgenson lost almost four minutes to the man in yellow, who rode like he was unleashed. "Why should I begrudge my rivals a victory that I can achieve myself," he said, explaining the chase.
However, this par force ride was not based solely on spontaneity and passionate rivalry. "Tadej chose a good moment to distance Jorgenson. We had chosen the point two kilometres before the finish as the ideal place to attack," said UAE sports director Matxin Fernandez, praising his protégé. Exactly 1.9 kilometres before the finish, Pogacar left the US-American standing.
Tadej Pogacar fulfils the plan
In general, Fernandez considered the new harmony between the plans of the sporting directors and the instinct of the racer to be one of the most important reasons for the successes of the entire season: "The whole year was characterised by the fact that we set ourselves an ambitious plan and we all stuck to it. Be it the training intervals with the focus on the long climbs, the shortened competition calendar, which Tadej agreed to, even if it was difficult for him to be at the training camp and see the others ride, or the plans for the individual stages."
In France, the pattern of Pogacar's Giro triumph was repeated. Here and there, he made his mark early on: In the Giro on the second day, in the Tour de France on the fourth. He humiliated Vingegaard for the first time on the Galibier. This was the key stage for the Slovenian. "It was the first long climb of the Tour. The balance of power was already evident here. After that, it was really just a smooth ride for me," he analysed. For the critics and doubters of Pogacar's performance, the 15th stage stood out. On the Plateau de Beille, he improved Marco Pantani's all-time best by 3:44 minutes. Former Festina coach and later anti-doping activist Antoine Vayer described the performance as "monstrous" and "mutant-like".
In addition to pharmaceutical help, as Vayer assumes, other factors such as the faster equipment, optimised nutrition and changed training stimuli also play a role. Pogacar underwent heat training. He also measured his core body temperature during the race using a core sensor to avoid overheating. He used shorter cranks on the bike (165 millimetres) in order to be able to pedal faster and more relaxed. He even won the 33.7-kilometre time trial from Monaco to Nice at the end - the first time he had won the Tour since 2021.
UAE and Pogacar reached a new level this year in the competition of "marginal gains". This is one of the reasons why the sports newspaper L'Equipe the Slovenian as "one from another planet". The trade journal once dedicated the same headline to Lance Armstrong. Let's hope that the parallels between the Texan and the Slovenian are exhausted.
Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe - too little substance
The German team with a new main sponsor had imagined this first Tour de France in bull livery very differently. "It's often like that in life: When you want to do something particularly well, it turns out very differently," said a melancholy team boss Ralph Denk. "But we can rest assured that there are reasons for this," he emphasised. He identified Primoz Roglic's withdrawal due to a crash as the main reason. The big - and only - goal had vanished into thin air: to win the Tour with the Slovenian. "After that, we all fell into an emotional hole, including us sporting directors," admitted Rolf Aldag. However, the team found it difficult to realise the secondary goal that was set afterwards. Only the Luxembourger Bob Jungels and the Australian Jai Hindley were able to get into breakaway groups in a promising enough position to dream of winning the day. But even these dreams crumbled. In order to become the "best team in the world", as Denk promised when Red Bull joined the team, there is still a lack of substance, at least at the moment.
Biniam Girmay - Fighter and expert
This Tour de France will also go down in the history books of Africa and African sport. Because the Eritrean Biniam Girmay won three stages and took the green jersey of the best sprinter. Never before has a black athlete from Africa achieved all of this. His fighting qualities were also impressive. Girmay crashed on the 16th stage and his lead dwindled. However, the following day, with pain in his knee and elbow, he restored the situation and defeated his rival Jasper Philipsen in a direct duel at the intermediate sprint.
He owed his great performance to a change in cycling philosophy and better structured training. "I've become more relaxed and no longer put myself under so much pressure," he said. The training focussed on greater resilience. "Biniam now arrives at a stage finale less exhausted. He can maintain his maximum speed for longer there," explained his sporting director Aike Visbeek. His protégé now belongs to the absolute sprint elite.
