After the Tour de France, Tadej Pogačar did something he hadn’t done in a long while. He had a relaxing summer that meant time with friends and time at the beach. “From Strade Bianche to the Tour de France, and throughout the Giro, I was in super good shape. After the Tour, when I switched off, my body went kind of into a shutdown mode. I was feeling quite, quite bad,” Pogačar said Wednesday in Quebec City, two days ahead of the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec. It wasn’t until two weeks following his third Tour de France win that he began structured training. The Quebec races are his next targets, followed by the world championships in Zürich, Switzerland.
His season has been stellar. Not only does he have the Tour de France win, but the Giro d’Italia, too. It started with a bang at Strade Bianche, where he announced that he’d attack from roughly 80 km from the finish. Oh, and there was Liège-Bastogne-Liège as well. He did skip one big event, though—the Olympic road race. “I didn’t like a lot of people pushing me to go to the Olympics, calling me and saying that I should be there, saying I could get an easy medal,” Pogačar said. “Nothing is easy in cycling, especially the Olympic Games on that kind of course.”
Stephen Roche discusses Tadej Pogačar’s chances of winning the Giro, Tour and worlds
Pogačar is using the Grands Prix Cyclistes de Québec et de Montréal, as many riders do, to prepare for the world championships. Still, these WorldTour races aren’t mere training rides. “I’m here to make a good race and try to win both if I can,” he said.
“Quebec is quite an open race,” Pogačar said, “but in the past, the attack didn’t work very well. A lot of times, it comes to the sprint that is super hard. But we have a really strong team here. So let’s see. I think we can make a hard race and see how the legs are turning.”
When Pogačar made his debut in 2022 in Quebec, he finished 24th. The course in Montreal suited him much better, as he took a win there two days later. Ahead of the 2024 race in Montreal, could he reveal, as he did for Strade Bianche, when and where he’d attack?
The answer was no.
“I cannot because then all people will follow and it will not work,” he said of any premeditated attack. “I need to keep some sort of, you know, mystery to it—so not everybody is…
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