Some may think Pogačar's dominance is bad for the sport, but I am on the other side thinking this is helping make the sport far bigger. His 5 wins at the Tour de France will become a record sixth next year and who know maybe one or two more after that.
Roughly 3 weeks ago cyclist Tadej Pogačar announced he would be competing in this years Tour De Vuelta which is the Tour of Spain along the same lines as the Tour de France. The Tour Du Vuelta is the first Grand Tour Pogačar competed in back in 2019 when he finished third. This third place finish is his worst result in any of the Grand Tour races and now he has returned to add this trophy to his cabinet collection.
There has been a handful of elite cyclists who have won the grand slam with the latest winning the grand Slam being Jonas Jonas Vingegaard when he won the Giro d'Italia earlier this year. This was probably what made up Pogačar's mind to compete this year. When it comes to the Grand Tour cycle events it is hard to think of anyone else winning besides Pogačar because he is that good.
What has been quite funny to see is prior to his announcement there were many top riders discussing with the press their chances of winning the event and since Pogačar's announcement downgraded to talking about stage wins. When Pogačar wins he wins by minutes and who can forget the Giro d'Italia when he finished over 10 minutes clear. The Tour de France this year he won by more than 6 minutes and the race was over before the final week was even raced such was his dominance. Crazy to think this could have been a bigger margin if he was not looking after Isaac del Toro guaranteeing he claimed a podium position and the white jersey being the best under 23 rider.
The Tour du Vuelta is now on the go and we have had 4 stages already having started in Monaco and having now made it's way to Spain. Of the 4 stages Pogačar has already won 2 with one cancelled which was yesterdays stage 3. This was a mountain stage and Pogačar was on tarck to win that stage when they had a sudden hail storm which was deemed to dangerous and the stage was cancelled.
This afternoon stage 4 with another mountain stage Pogačar went clear on his own with more than 50km to go and won by a record margin of 2 minutes and 39 seconds and the biggest of his career. Worryingly for the other riders he is already 3 minutes and 21 seconds up in the overall classification and with 17 stages left the race is almost over before it has started. Injury is the only thing stopping Pogačar and his first grand slam title.
The problem with being rated so highly and justifiably so is these results are just expected of you and demoralise the other riders at the same time. There is no other rider on his same level and the gap in class is that obvious. Normally when we see riders they are either great at one event like sprinting or climbing and Pogačar is great at climbing and is one of the best when doing time trials.
