How defeat in the Tour de France makes Tadezh Pogacar greater

The mask started to break in the mouth. a little fever, herpes simplex, on her happy lips as the camera that scanned her face stopped as she waited to count down the time trial ramp to a half-second pause.

He explains, “It’s very typical in cyclists when there’s a lot of physiological and psychological effort involved, and the Tour is to win, isn’t it?” Íñigo San Millán, coach of Tadej Pogacar, One of the craftsmen of the mask of optimism, exceptional form, indifference, aggressiveness, daring and security, with which the Slovenian faced the Tour, and the inaccessible Jonas Vinggaard realizes that he has little to do. “It’s very typical in cyclists. In the Tour de France, usually someone has herpes. Well, now it’s Tadeg’s turn, just as it might be another’s…”

24-year-old Pogacar, in his three previous Tours, two victories, a second place, at the Vuelta on his debut where he made Roglic shiver, at 19, in his indomitable years he didn’t have herpes.

Tadig fell on 23 April. The wrist was operated on the same day, two months after the start of the tour. With Tadej, before the Tour we always did a good two training sets of one month each, but this year we only had one time,” San Millán analyzed. “I always said we were very optimistic, but we had to be careful. We don’t know of anyone who won the Tour de France after a month of training. But maybe we let ourselves be fooled by the numbers, which was very good in Sestriere’s concentration, and then he won the Slovenian championship very easily, and the Tour started very strong … And so we all forgot, both of us in the team, also in the press, also in the fans, it was a very difficult task to win Tour with a month of training, with one block and not with two blocks.

The mask was perfect. the sprints of Pike and Jeskybel, an unusual rebound in Quirettes from the Marie-Blanc crisis, caused by anxiety; Sprints on the Puy de Dôme, Grand Colombier, Joux Plane, Mont Blanc … Laughing baguettes on one day off, drowning in the pool, like a child, the other day. Happy cyclist, happy scientist. He is not a carefree Pogacar of other years, of wild, distant attacks, without fear of failure. It’s a calculated, voltage-controlled Pogacar, not over a watt. “I do it because I learned from the defeat in 2022,” Pogacar explained, and everyone believed him. Pogacar is serious, experienced and safe. The mask is perfect. deceive everyone. Not for Vingegaard, who knows him better than himself. This was not his Pogacar. “He attacked me every day. He wanted to impress me. He showed me that I was so strong. That’s where I saw my insecurities,” says the Dane who could have taken off his mask earlier, but waited for the trial time. Good blow, And on the last day of the Alps, the stage he loves the most, and in which he got a little push, on the way to La Loze, to face Pogacar at his limits, and on Sunday, with a difference not seen in decades, he will win his second Tour, which will be conducted by The 14th member of the Petit Breton Club, Firmin Lambot, Ottavio Botticchia, Nicolas Frantz, André Leduc, Antonin Magny, Silver Maes, Gino Bartali, Fausto Coppi, Bernard Thevenet, Laurent Fignon, Alberto Contador and Tadej Pogacar. “He who always attacks becomes weak. Every day it costs more to open a gap; the opponent has it easier every day.”

Going up La Loze, the only mask was Vingegaard’s incompressibility, the cool executor of his strategy, the big glasses, the gloves, the closed-to-the-neck shirt. By then Pogacar was separated, accompanied only by his roommate Marc Soler, he had shed his mask, his glasses, his shirt, the scars from his fall, herpes, and his stomach that were symptoms of exhaustion. Refusal to ingest – There is a law: the better it is swallowed and digested, the stronger it is: it is as sure a way as VO2max or other thresholds distinguish champions – and its appearance.

The highest sex appeal of the hero who fought and lost. The defeat meant a record increase in the number of followers on the networks. It got bigger by losing. Without a mask, after the Tour, Pogacar will need to rest physically and mentally, and prepare for the Italian Fall Classics, which means he won’t be doing the Tour,

“We now know that to do the Tour de France you have to do two blocks, not one block,” says Saint-Millan. “We wanted a battle with Vingegaard to the last metre. He gave it to us. And looking at all the data we see we’re talking about that with a month of preparation and he’s doing second in the Tour de France. For me you have to find out for yourself. There are many other runners who have been from They could explode the same way, and they’d be the 10th or the 20th. Tadge kept fighting and fighting and fighting. Doing second isn’t paid for as a booger. Tadge is human and so is cycling. We’re facing a new era of cycling that’s full of emotions.”

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