Less than 48 hours before he starts his Giro d’Italia-Tour de France double bid, an upbeat Tadej Pogačar has confirmed that his overall condition has improved as a result of his racing less and training more in 2024.
To date Pogačar has only done ten race days this season, starting at Strade Bianche and continuing with Milan-Sanremo, the Volta a Catalunya and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, far less than in previous first halves of the year.
That total will increase significantly from Saturday onwards when Pogačar takes on the first leg of the biggest challenge of his career to date - becoming the first rider since Marco Pantani to win both Giro and Tour in the same year.
But in his final pre-Giro press conference, and after taking seven wins so far this season including his sixth Monument at Liège less than two weeks ago, Pogačar stated that his overall form has taken an important step upwards as a result of the comparatively limited race program so far. Nor is it only a physical improvement: by racing less, he explained he’s “more eager for success.”
“I am better this year, I feel more comfortable on the bike, I feel I’m enjoying it even more than before,” Pogačar told reporters on Thursday.
“I love to train hard, I also have some rest periods between trainings because I think that’s how you improve. If you just go from race to race, you can get fatigued pretty fast without even knowing.
“And I think less race days and more training is working for me, more structured, long weeks of training. Yeah, I like it.
“Now it’s time to race almost one month, and then one month after, one month again full gas There’s still a lot of racing.”
At the same time, he recognised that by racing less, “of course you’re more motivated when you’re just at home training. You know the shape is good, you see the races and you want to be there. This is really beneficial for the mind when you come to races with this mentality. You’re more eager for success.”
After his latest round of racing in Liège, Pogačar said that he had spent the interim “training hard and resting well,” not to mention doing some karting. Globally he said, it had gone well, and he had spent some time with his family as well, “and here we are.”
“It’s all getting close and you just want to get started, you’re just counting down the days, the tension is growing and the nerves are coming. But it’s all in a good sense - everybody wants to race, and so do I.”
Pogačar played down the idea that he would like to get the ball rolling by moving straight away into pink on the first, very rugged weekend of racing, which includes a summit finish at Oropa with indelible associations with the previous double winner, Marco Pantani on Sunday.
“My ambition is to wear the maglia, but if you want to be in pink in Rome, you don’t have to be in pink now. You see how the legs are going in the first stages and you see how the race develops. But if there’s an opportunity to wear pink, you take it," he said.
He did agree, though, that Oropa, coming so early in the race, was tough enough to offer a key opportunity to get a real picture of the GC leader's respective state of form.
Amongst those rivals, apart from the “young guns” present on Saturday’s startline in Venaria Reale he also named veterans Romain Bardet (Team dsm-firmenich-PostNL) and last year’s Giro runner-up, Geraint Thomas (Ineos-Grenadiers) as important contenders.
If some observers are to be believed, Pogacar has already won the Giro d’Italia almost before he’s started it, so is his status as the favourite. But the Slovenian bristled slightly at the idea that he was the only top contender, saying it was “a little bit shit, not nice, not respectful to other riders. There’s not so much difference when it comes to the big mountains, every team wants to go for the victory.”
“It’s kind of bullshit but it’s maybe my fault as well. I’ve done few races, I’ve prepared for them really well, but you need to see the bigger picture, too."
However, he did recognise it as the top favourite, it was inevitable that his squad would be placed under a lot of scrutiny and would be expected to ‘make the race.’ And he was adamant that unlike some of those rivals have suggested, his squad might not have the depth it needs to keep control of the Giro in the mountains - where the decisive final battles for victory will likely take place.
“I don’t think so, I can be really confident in guys like Rafał Majka and Felix Großschartner, then also we have a really big train, pretty big team. If everything goes normal we have a really good team for the whole of the Giro," he said.
“But every race I go to, I'm considered as a favourite, so I am prepared for this, and always have it in mind that as a team, everybody races against us. So we have to take the race on from the start.
"Everyone follows our lead, but we always need to follow our own plan.”
Key to that plan, of course, is how Pogacar himself will tackle the race. With so many time trials in the race, he has, he told reporters, spent more time on the TT bike over the winter and was feeling increasingly confident for the time trials - a discipline he last tested himself in live conditions at the World Championships early last August.
While most questions logically centred on the Giro, Pogačar was also asked about the rider who has prevented him from taking the Tour de France both in 2022 and again in 2023 - Jonas Vingegaard, currently in a lengthy period of recuperation following his brutal crash and subsequent injuries in Itzulia-Basque Country this April.
Pogačar said that he and his girlfriend had been watching the stage when the crash happened, and “we just went silent. It was really horrific, so many guys on the ground that didn’t even move, we never want this to happen to anyone.”
“I hope he’s recovering well. It was a really dramatic crash that can cause trauma for some of the riders involved, and now I’m hoping for the best for him.”
