Tadej Pogacar has admitted that he is “already counting down the years until retirement” after his latest Tour de France success.
Pogacar continued to dominate the peloton in claiming a fourth yellow jersey in July, cruising to victory over rival Jonas Vingegaard and the rest of the would-be general classification contenders.
Still yet to turn 27, the Slovenian is assembling a palmares rivalled by only the greats of the sport having added Giro d’Italia and World Championships success to his Tour title last year, and continuing to pick off plenty of monuments and classics.
Yet Pogacar, normally ebullient on and off the bike, cut a slightly downbeat figure at times during the Tour amid apparent battles with illness, and did not attack in his usual fashion during the final weeks in the Alps.
Insisting, though, that the drive still remains to win as much as possible, the 26-year-old nonetheless offered a hint that he is thinking about his future and knows that victories may not always come.
“The fact is that I am already counting the years until retirement,” Pogacar told the Slovenian press having won an exhibition criterium race in his home town of Komenda.
“I started winning early, and there can also be worse results, I am ready for anything. I will probably ride a few more Tours, although you can never say that you will definitely compete there. The Tour is the biggest race and I doubt that the team will leave me at home for a few more years.
“Everyone can have a bad day. You can’t expect me to be glowing with happiness for all 21 stages. The Tour was really hard, one of the hardest I’ve ridden, everyone who fought for the overall classification can confirm that. But now I’ve rested, ‘reset’ and I’m ready for new battles.”
Pogacar made his real breakthrough as a professional at the Vuelta a Espana in 2019, taking third place on the streets of Spain having gone in with few expectations.
He has not returned to the Spanish Grand Tour since and thus still needs a red jersey to complete the set of successes in the sport’s three most prestigious stage races.
Any tilt will have to wait until next year at the earliest with Pogacar planning a slimmed down schedule in the final months of the year. He will, however, try to target road race victory at the European Championships in France on 5 October, which comes just a week after the World Championships in Rwanda.
First, though, he will return to racing in Canada. “We know that Montreal suits me better but that doesn’t mean that I won’t try to win in Quebec as well,” Pogacar said of the upcoming pair of races in the country.
“This year they changed the course a bit, it’s even easier now, but the goal is harder, so we will try to win there as well. It’s not necessarily me, we have a few other competitors who could suit this goal, especially Jhonathan Narvaez.
“According to the information we have, it’ll be a European Championship for ‘climbers’ this year, so I will probably be there. It is similar to one of the spring races that Juan Ayuso won this year. But this European Championship probably means that I will not be able to go to any other Italian Classics except [Il] Lombardia.”
