Tadej Pogačar‘s words on the Col de la Loze climb in the 2023 Tour de France – “I’m gone, I’m dead” – have echoed through cycling as one of the toughest moments of the Slovenian’s career to date, and are well-known as the moment when Pogačar definitively lost cycling’s biggest bike race that year.
Radioed through to his team car on the interminable Alpine descent, an exhausted Pogačar finally lost seven minutes to the race favourites and all hope of a third Tour de France victory in four years.
Pogačar subsequently went on to win a further two Tours in 2024 and 2025 as well as becoming the greatest racer of his generation, and while the Slovenian is notoriously averse to comparisons, some claim he is now fast approaching the level of domination and success of all-time great Eddy Merckx.
Currently with four Tours in his palmares, as well as a Giro d’Italia, Gianetti also said in the interview that Pogačar could have won the 2019 Vuelta, his first ever Grand Tour, had he not been chased down by Movistar, working for second placed Alejandro Valverde on the final day in the mountains.
However, perhaps the most striking moment in the interview came when Gianett argued that the point when Pogačar was on his knees in the Tour de France in 2023 on the Col de la Loze was the high point of his career to date.
“A champion like him, completely exhausted, reaching the finish line seven minutes behind the leader, having lost everything… 90% of the other riders would have quit that day and given up due to illness. They would have abandoned the Tour,” Gianetti said.
“He could have quit. He could have cried. He could have shown that he couldn’t do it anymore. But that didn’t occur to him.”Instead, as Gianetti pointed out to RIDE, Pogacar opted to battle on.
Recalling their first meeting in 2018 after Pogačar had won the Tour de l’Avenir, Gianetti told RIDE that the young Slovenian, still an amateur, was “a bit overweight.” But apart from…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CyclingNews RSS Feed…