Tadej Pogačar slowly climbs into the final press conference of the Tour, between two members of the UAE Team Emirates staff, his legs a little tired and swaying towards them. He looks younger than you’d expect, like a boy, slight of build, but with an illusion of strength. He’s done it before, twice, but neither was like this. Today, Tadej Pogačar was beaten: beaten on the Col du Granon, beaten on Hautacam and defeated in the time trial.
There’s something of a joke when he walks in, walking down a narrow path past 20 rows of plastic folding tables filled with reporters. There is a polite rush to the front of the room. Waiting for the room to settle, Pogačar looks around, surveying his surroundings, a basketball stadium on the edge of Rocamadour that smells like sweat and feels like a greenhouse. His blue eyes look up at the beams and around the walls. He’s usually mischievous, but today he looks a little blank. Boring, almost.
The questions begin. Go in circles with your answers, almost identical for the first ones. “A lot of little mistakes were made,” he says a couple of times. “Sure we can improve”
A helicopter passes overhead, its noise piercing the tin walls. Pogačar is a bit hard to hear now. spoken softly His English has improved over the past two years as his position has grown and become more distinctive. Today, dressed in white rather than yellow, he is less vibrant in appearance and demeanor, curling in on himself. Instead of talking about what went well, Tadej Pogačar is forced to face what didn’t.
The Col du Granon, this is a place. “I was also, uh…” – search for the word – “…motivated to follow everyone.” He faced a better team, and his team, half of it, had terrible luck. “There was almost no weakness in Jumbo-Visma,” he said. “They lost two pilots, but it didn’t seem like they had less, maybe because we had four,” he says with a smile on his lips. “There are so many factors, we could go on all day.” His eyes move around the room, never making eye contact with anyone. Walls, roof, floor, walls.
In three Tours de France, Pogačar has never stopped trying to win, but recently he seems to care that he likes it. At the start of the Hautacam stage, lining up alongside Vingegaard, he turned to his rival with a broad smile and a fist bump and appeared to say: “We’re going to have fun today.”
Pogačar didn’t look like he was having fun today. It looked like after three stage wins, after finishing third in the last time trial, after finishing second in the Tour de France against a stronger team and a stronger rider, he would leave the Tour disappointed.
Now he faces the ‘what next’. How can he win again. If you will change your running style. If the “big challenge in Jonas that I couldn’t overcome” will affect him next year, next year, next year.
Tadej Pogačar gets up and walks slowly down the corridor by the basketball room. His head of press pats him on the shoulder. She has a zip up the back of her white T-shirt, fresh off the podium, ready to come off. Jonas Vingegaard, flanked by Jumbo-Visma staff members, approaches, a Netflix camera crew behind them, and in the narrow space they are on a collision course and reality cannot be avoided, just in front of him They shake their fists, quickly, a little subdued, and then Tadej Pogačar enters a world where he has lost a Tour de France.