As a journalist working in the current era of professional men’s cycling, it has become a bit of a risk to only travel to the final week of a Grand Tour. That’s because, thanks to a certain world champion who goes by the name of Tadej Pogačar, the race can sometimes already be decided by this point and there aren’t many stories left to tell. You can only write about one rider winning so many times.
Take the Giro d’Italia last year as a case in point. By the first rest day the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider had a lead of over two minutes and 40 seconds and two stage wins already to his name. He took the pink jersey on the second day of the race, and wore it for the next 20, winning on almost every single key alpine stage – days which organisers would have put in the race in the hope of creating a gripping general classification battle. The Tour de France was only marginally more interesting: Pogačar took the maillot jaune on stage four and held it to the very last day in Nice (taking six stage wins too). There were a couple of spirited battles from Jonas Vingegaard to upset his Slovenian rider’s dominance, but Pogačar, in the end, finished the Tour with a winning margin of almost seven minutes in front of the Visma-Lease a Bike rider.
Pogačar wins his fifth stage in the 2024 Giro d’Italia (Image: Zac Williams/SWpix.com)
There’s certainly an argument that living through the Pogačar-era of professional cycling means we are witnessing history being made. The way that the world champion can ride away from entire teams trying to stop him, the way he can excel on all and every terrain, the way he looks unflappable under pressure, are all signifiers of his generational talent. This sort of bike rider doesn’t come around often – we haven’t seen someone do what Pogačar can do since Eddy Merckx, the 11-time Grand Tour and five-time Monument winner and the most successful rider in the history of competitive cycling.
So we can talk about the epoch-making attacks and the momentous record-breaking times up mountains, and we can appreciate what we are watching. But are we really enjoying seeing Pogačar do that, time and time again, in the moment? Is this really what we want bike racing to become? A sport which can be so unpredictable and engaging, having a winner decided before the battles can even commence?
If we wanted a taste of what Grand Tour races could be like when Pogačar doesn’t take to the start line,…