At the end of a time trial in which he lights his last wick, violent, stunning, Tadej Pogacar, 21, says: “I feel like my head is going to explode.” On Saturday, at the Belles Filles board (Haute-Saône), the leader of Team UAE-Emirates has just thrown the audience of the Tour de France as much as his rival and compatriot Primoz Roglic – and himself by the way. He parades this Sunday (a final stage won by Sam Bennett, from Deceuninck-Quick Step) on the Champs-Elysées wearing a yellow jersey. Hide the polka dot one of the best climber below, the white of the best youngster. The Slovenian is a foodie. He is the youngest winner of the event since 1904 and dethrones the Colombian Egan Bernal (Ineos), who abandoned the race due to injury.
Tadej Pogacar acted as a mischievous teenager, retorting to the bullying of the Jumbo-Visma alone, without a team member or almost. In the Col de Peyresourde, he fled far away, no one could catch up with him, and he thus restored half of the minute he lost on the favorites the day before. He had punctured just as the peloton was tearing apart in the wind. In the Marie-Blanque pass, he won the first of his three stages for his first Tour. Erase the favorites one by one, give an old shot to Egan Bernal, outgoing winner and two years older than him. Until wiping off the map Primoz Roglic, the unmoved final boss. “Tamau Pogi”, a leprechaun in Slovenian, is playing a bicycle. His childhood friend Jaka Primozic used to tell Release: “Tadej eats what he wants, sleeps when he wants, gets up to train when he wants. He can stop peeing 5 kilometers from the last pass of the last stage of the Tour de l’Avenir and defend his yellow jersey. ”
Read also Tadej Pogacar, quiet prodigy of the Tour de France
The third of the last Tour of Spain, also winner of the Tour of California, is supervised at UAE Emirates by Mauro Gianetti and Matxin Joxean Fernandez, former managers of the team sponsored by the Saunier Duval boilers. Which reminds us of the 2008 Tour and their exclusion after Ricardo Ricco tested positive at EPO. This entourage, its top-flight performances… It doesn’t take much for the doping rumors to rustle. Answered him : “My genetic recovery abilities are truly remarkable. I guess I have to thank my parents. ”
Romain Boulho Special Envoy on the Tour de France
.
