With back-to-back Giro d’Italia and Tour de France titles successfully sealed, Tadej Pogacar has set his sights on sweeping up at the Olympics and world championships after reinventing himself and his career.
“If I’m here like this, in this position, there’s a very good reason,” the 25-year-old said as he stormed to a third Tour title after his 2020 and 2021 wins.
“It hurt coming second,” he added of the 2022 and 2023 Tour de France wins claimed by rival Jonas Vingegaard.
It was the kind of remark you might have expected from the man he is most compared to, cycling’s all-time geat Eddy Merckx.
And Pogacar shares many attributes with the so-called “Cannibal”, the Belgian who wanted to win it all.
“Mark Cavendish here I come,” Pogacar said in reference to the British sprinter’s record 35 wins on the Tour after one of his now 15 stage wins with years still ahead of him in his career.
As with Merckx, a Tour title isn’t a Tour title without several stage wins to add to the glory.
“This is racing, expect me to continue,” he once scolded a reporter asking if it was necessary to win all the time.
Winning again will be on his mind at the Paris Olympics next week when he looks to improve on his road race bronze medal from the Tokyo Games.
Then Pogacar aims for world gold in Zurich in September having claimed a bronze in Glasgow two years ago.
“It is an Olympic year and there are the World Championships too,” he said.
“I really like the course this year at the Worlds. Switzerland is a nice country. To have the rainbow jersey would be a dream.”
Merckx and Stephen Roche are the only two male riders to have won the triple of Giro, Tour and worlds while Annemiek van Vleuten achieved it in women’s cycling.
However, nobody has also added an Olympic title to the collection.
If Pogacar pulls it off, hard taskmaster Merckx will be singing his praises.
The Belgian five-time Tour de France winner told AFP in 2023: “Vingegaard is for now the greatest Grand Tour rider. Pogacar is more complete but needs to change to beat Vingegaard.”
And change he has. The self-described “good boy from a good family taking no short cuts in life” still bursts with an overload of confidence and charisma.
He learned to rein in some of his instincts following his 2022 and 2023 losses on the Tour to Vingegaard while refusing to abandon his enthusiasm for attack.
Pogacar won a staggering six stages on his way to winning the Giro this year.
But he then held his fire over the first two weeks of the Tour de France where Vingegaard was tailing his every move.
Before Paris though, Pogacar is yearning for home comforts.
After effectively sealing the Tour on stage 19 on Friday he looked ahead to the end of the race in the region where he lives, Monaco.
“After the final time-trial in Nice I can just get on my bike, ride home and go to sleep,” he said.
