Tadej Pogacar is exceptional but I think he is also clean

Times

27-07-2025

The rain poured and the roads in the capital were treacherous. So dangerous that Tour de France organisers agreed time differences wouldn't count. All that Tadej Pogacar had to do to clinch his fourth Tour de France was to avoid risk. Find a safe place in the peloton and stay upright. Simple, but he couldn't do it. Like Shakespeare's Coriolanus, Pogacar could only play the man he is.
So on this first occasion of a splendid new route for the final stage, he got involved in a fierce battle for the stage victory, taking the same risks as the other five riders in the breakaway. There were three ascents of the 1.1-kilometre Côte de la Butte Montmartre, and each time he attacked. Every ascent was followed by descents in the driving rain.
On the last circuit, Pogacar distanced four of the five in the group but Wout van Aert stayed with him and then near the top, the Belgian counterattacked. For the first time in the Tour, Pogacar himself was distanced.
Van Aert went on to achieve a famous victory, slowing down better to savour the moment as he crossed the finish line on the Champs-Élysées. For his Visma-Lease a Bike team it was a terrific end to a difficult Tour. It was the team's second stage victory and their leader, Jonas Vingegaard, finished second overall, but that was still less than they had hoped for. 'We came to win the Yellow Jersey but came up against the strongest rider in the race and best rider in the world,' Van Aert said.
In dreadful conditions, it was a compelling climax that validated the decision to dispense with what had long been a ceremonial end to the Tour, a race in which little happened and almost always ended with a bunch sprint. Pogacar knew the risks of trying to win the final stage. One bad fall and that could have been him out of the race. And still, he couldn't play safe.
'I found myself in the front,' he said afterwards, 'even though I didn't have the energy to motivate myself to race. I tried but hats off to Wout, he was incredibly strong. It was a really nice race in the end today. I am speechless to win a fourth Tour. Six years in a row on the podium and this one feels especially amazing. I am super-proud to wear this Yellow Jersey.
'The second week was the decisive week where we took the decisive advantage and we went more comfortably into the final week. Battling against Jonas was again a tough experience but respect to him and big congratulations for his fight. Now it's time to celebrate. I want to celebrate with peace this week and have nice weather, not like now.'
The other general classification (GC) contenders stayed well clear of the fight on that hill in Montmartre and were happy just to stay upright. Vingegaard poured every ounce of himself into the three-week battle against Pogacar and though the contest was relatively close, he lost every round. His two bad days, in the Caen time-trial and on Hautacam, were two more than he could afford. Pogacar hasn't had a bad day at the Tour since Col de la Loze in 2023.
Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hangrohe) and Oscar Onley (Picnic-PostNL), who finished third and fourth, were the revelations of the race. They will now be contenders in whatever grand tour they care to ride and it will be interesting to watch Ben Healy's development. Could he too become a grand tour contender? Lipowitz, Onley, Healy and plenty of others will wonder about Pogacar, 26, and how long he can continue at his present level. Their futures are connected to his.
There is an interesting conversation about this, the most recent demonstration of one rider's brilliance. Many consider this to be a compelling renewal of the greatest bike race. Others shake their heads and bemoan the predictability. Didn't Pogacar, they ask without needing an answer, drive a stake through the heart of his only rival, Vingegaard, on the first day in the high mountains? And wasn't that ten days before the end?
Like beauty, riveting sport is in the eye of the beholder. There is no right answer, only opinions. Each one as valid as the next. My view is complicated by more than four decades of following and writing about the Tour. First experience was 1982, the last two days, which are generally the two least interesting. We went because that year our Irish compatriot Sean Kelly won the Green Jersey for the first time.
That Sunday's finish on the Champs-Élysées was curious . It was Bernard Hinault's fourth Tour and by then, even the French were growing tired of his success. That year Hinault had taken his advantage in the time-trials and then defended in the mountains. Breathtaking, it wasn't. Towards the end, the lament was that he hadn't been able to take a proper road stage.
Reacting to the criticism, Hinault contested the bunch sprint on the Champs-Élysées. It wasn't something he did often but he won it. Through rookie eyes, it seemed an unusual outcome. How could a GC rider suddenly become a bunch sprinter and beat all the specialists?
One rider in that Tour said that it was either let Hinault win on the Champs-Élysées or not be invited to post-Tour criteriums in Brittany. I'm still not sure if he was joking. Back then it was common for deals to be struck between riders and between teams. Results were traded; sometimes for the promise of future help, sometimes for cash. The more you thought you knew, the less you actually knew.
Two days in 1982 became two weeks in 1983, and in 1984, the entire Tour with the sacred green badge given to an accredited journalist. Though the race had a certain global appeal, no one would have mistaken it for a slick global operation. They were elite-level athletes staying in school dormitories while riding the Tour. Dormitories without air conditioning, on the hottest Tour nights.
It was, though, a good race for journalists. Walk into a hotel, or indeed a school dormitory and there was a list on the wall telling the room number of each rider. No one wondered where you were going or worried too much about the demands on riders. And on the Reims to Nancy stage of the 1985 Tour, Ludwig Wynants consummated my relationship with the Tour.
For years, I had struggled with a speech disorder. In any kind of pressurised situation, I stuttered. It wasn't much fun. That year I agreed to do daily reports for RTE radio from the Tour, thinking that if I could survive live radio, the speech problem would be overcome. Shock treatment, you could say.
I knew from experience that words beginning with L and W were particularly challenging. So Ludwig Wynants was a nightmare. The last two words of the report delivered live on RTE that Saturday afternoon were 'Ludwig Wynants'. The name emerged almost fluently and, from that day, things improved. So I owe the Tour.
The Eightiess were good: Laurent Fignon against Hinault in '84; Hinault against Greg LeMond in '85; LeMond against Hinault in '86; Stephen Roche against Pedro Delgado in '87. They were interesting races but if we'd been more honest in those, we would have wondered aloud about the abuse of testosterone, cortisone and other banned drugs. Without ever talking about it, riders informed us that what they took was their business, not ours. For the most part we agreed.
There was a price to be paid for our compliance with omertà, the law of silence. In 1990 Paul Kimmage's Rough Ride was published and the ex-professional laid bare the endemic doping culture within cycling, not that many were ready to accept the truth. For this was the beginning of the EPO years and however bad things had been, they weren't getting any better.
For so long, it was impossible to believe in the Tour. The Nineties were a continuation of the Eighties, the Noughties were as bad as the Nineties and then along came Team Sky, winning seven out of eight Tours. They talked of winning clean but since 2016 there has been scandal after scandal related to how that team was run. The latest surfaced two weeks ago and now the International Testing Agency has opened an investigation into former Sky, now Ineos Grenadiers', soigneur David Rozman.
In 2020, along came Pogacar. The then 21-year-old won his first Tour de France. He's now ridden the race six times; four victories and twice runner-up. He improves a little every year but he is essentially the same rider now as back then, and pretty much every week of every season. There hasn't been any evidence of wrongdoing.
I believe he's an exceptional, credible champion. Consequently his victories are never boring and his dominance is a joy, not a reason for suspicion. This era has been the most credible that cycling has known and it should be celebrated.