Former stage racing great Alberto Contador believes that if the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia are both conquered by Tadej Pogačar this year, the Slovenian will go for an unprecedented ‘triple’ and try to win the Vuelta a España as well.
With the Giro and Vuelta often overlapping in the calendar until 1995, no rider has ever tried to win all three of cycling’s top stage races in the same year. However, Contador has previously said that with a stronger team and before he retired in 2017, he could have at least had a go himself at taking the ‘triple Grand Tour Crown’.
Chris Froome (Israel-Premier Tech), like Contador a Giro, Vuelta and Tour champion but also in different years, said in 2017 that taking all three ‘would take some doing but is not impossible.’ The last Giro-Tour double was captured by Marco Pantani back in 1998, and last year Jumbo-Visma became the first team to win all three Grand Tours in a single season, but with different riders.
As Contador, who retired in 2017 and now co-manages the Polti-Kometa team, recently told Gazzetta dello Sport, “You know what? If Tadej Pogačar wins the Giro and the Tour, he’ll also go for the Vuelta and try for an unheard-of triple victory! I’m sure of it.”
For many years in cycling, trying to go for three Tours in one season was literally impossible, given the Vuelta was only relatively recently created – in 1936, over two decades after the Giro and Tour began – and then only took place sporadically until the early 1950s.
The Vuelta’s comparatively low prestige until the 1970s was yet another factor, while with dates frequently overlapping back when the Vuelta was raced in April or May, opting for three Grand Tours in modern-day cycling was even more daunting a challenge. That was even before the physical and psychological demands of doing ‘the triple’ in the space of four months at most, from April through to July, are considered.
Marco Pantani, the only rider to take the Giro and Tour double since the Vuelta’s change in dates in 1995, rapidly ruled out riding the Vuelta that September, and Eddy Merckx, who won both Vuelta and Giro in 1973, did not ride the Tour that year. Merckx (1972-73), Bernard Hinault (1982-83) and Chris Froome (2017-2018) have all been reigning champions in all three Grand Tours, but across two separate seasons.
As for winning the Giro and Tour in a single year in 2024, Contador argued that the key factor for Pogačar to succeed would be…
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