No plan survives first contact with the enemy, so the saying goes, but Tadej Pogačar didn’t face a rival capable of knocking him even slightly off track at the Giro d’Italia. The scheme drawn up by his entourage to tackle the Giro and Tour de France remains firmly in place after his emphatic victory in Italy.
No rider has achieved the Giro-Tour double since Marco Pantani in 1998. The few to have seriously attempted the feat in the years since, notably Ivan Basso, Alberto Contador and Chris Froome, all came up short in July after dipping too deep into their reservoirs in May.
