Giro-Tour double: Pog vs other recent attempts

First Tour rest day and we need to take stock. There were a ton of unknowns among the pre-race GC favorites, including the recovery statuses of Vingegaard, Roglic, and Evenepoel, plus a major heat check on the recent Giro winner Pogacar. The latter is what I am focusing on here, specifically how is he faring when compared with other recent Giro winners? How are we to know if what he has done so far is better, worse, or business as usual for a Giro winner attempting to win the Tour?

To that end, I looked at all the riders who podiumed at the Giro and then raced the Tour since 2010. I didn’t want to get into the Lance mess of the oughts. I did include not just the Giro winners but the entire podium from that race to increase the sample size. That’s 14 seasons and potentially 42 Giro podium riders. The actual number of riders was just 11. Far more Giro podiumists skipped the Tour and did the Vuelta.

Four of the 14 seasons had no Giro podium finishers riding the Tour: 2023, 2022, 2019, and 2014, Oh, include 2020 since the Giro happened after the Tour that year. 2018 and 2016 each had two Giro podium boys riding the Tour.

Photo by MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP via Getty Images

So did I learn anything, besides the obvious, that none of these 11 riders won both the Giro and the Tour? Sure, maybe, probably: I mean just 11 riders is a small sample size so I would not bet your house on Pogacar winning or losing the Tour. However, to balance the small sample size, the quality of the riders is a who’s who of the elite GC guys. Froome. Contador. Doom. Nibali. Evans: almost all the major GC guys before the Roglic-Pog-Vinge-Remco generation reared their heads. And as I will say later on, that’s important. I take a closer look at each of the 11 riders at the bottom of this post, but first some thoughts on. what I see, which you can disagree with:

Photo by POOL BERNARD PAPON/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images

None of these 11 riders who podiumed in the Giro and then raced the Tour were leading the Tour after stage 9. Pogacar has already done something that they other GC heavies didn’t….