Pogi in pink: What impact will Pogačar riding the Giro have on 2024 and beyond

Cyclist
Pogi in pink: What impact will Pogačar riding the Giro have on 2024 and beyond

Tadej Pogačar has announced his racing programme for 2024, and in the first year when the 25-year-old can’t win the white jersey, he’s decided to have a punt at a whole new colour. For the first time in his career he’ll take on the Giro d’Italia, aiming to add the maglia rosa to his two maillots jaunes.

It’s a decision that has no doubt struck fear into the hearts of all his rivals. More importantly though, it gives him the chance to cement his place among the cycling greats. His 2024 programme will still include the Tour de France, meaning he could become the first cyclist since Marco Pantani in 1998 to win the Giro-Tour double in the same year.

It’s a feat that has only been achieved previously by other Hall of Famers: Eddy Merckx, Fausto Coppi, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain all did it twice and Jacques Anquetil once. Several cycling commentators have compared Pogacar to Merckx for all his all-round ability, and Merckx himself has called him ‘the new Cannibal’ – so no pressure there, then.

Pogačar’s decision to ride both Grand Tours next year won’t just have an impact on his own season and legacy: it could shape racing for all of next year and have a knock-on effect on his rivals. It also complicates his attempt to reclaim the Tour from Jonas Vingegaard – so why is he doing it, and what does it mean?

Why this year?

At 25 he’s in prime physical shape and unburdened by injuries like last year’s fractured wrist at Liège-Bastogne-Liège – which still wasn’t enough to prevent him from being a real Tour contender until late in the final week, so who knows what he could have achieved otherwise.

He’s also made it clear that the Giro has also been a goal. At the UAE training camp on Monday when his schedule was announced, he said, ‘I always wanted to do the Giro. It’s one of my favourite races because it’s close to Slovenia and as a kid we really loved to watch the Giro and go to the stages.’

It also fits with what we know of Pogačar: a rider who races for the sheer love of it and seems physically incapable of turning down any challenge. He said, ‘I’m not so young anymore, and I think I can do two Grand Tours. I probably could have before, but it’s a nice time to have a new challenge in my career.’

Perhaps surprisingly, UAE Team Emirates didn’t discourage him in order to protect his Tour chances. Team boss Mauro Gianetti said, ‘Every year we have a new project with Tadej. The past two years, it was the northern classics and the monuments. Now it’s time for the Giro.’

It makes sense that the team are planning to build up his palmarès across as many of cycling’s hallowed races as possible. Despite never contesting the Giro Pogačar is entirely at home on Italian soil, with two wins at Tirreno-Adriatico, one at Strade Bianche, and a record-equalling hat-trick of consecutive wins at Il Lombardia.

And his own history is on his side. Famously, he was simply too good at the Vuelta a España in 2019 to compete at the Giro the following year as planned, so UAE decided to take him straight to the Tour off the back of his third-place finish and best young rider victory in Spain. He won the Tour on his first appearance – and you certainly wouldn’t be against him doing the same thing at the Giro.

What do the two routes look like?

Critics will – and naturally, already have on Twitter – argue that Pogačar is hedging his bets by targeting the maglia rosa because Vingegaard has now bested him twice in a row in France.

And both races route profile would support such an interpretation. This year’s Giro features two time-trials, ideal for the Slovenian all-rounder to put time into his rivals, and avoids the high altitude in the Alps where he has suffered in the past.

Riders will face around 10,000 metres fewer of climbing than in 2023 and the race will be less backloaded than usual, making it a less brutal race overall and crucially less intense in its final week.

It’s also worth pointing out that the competition is less steep than at the Tour, with Ineos’ Geraint Thomas potentially hoping to redeem himself after last year’s heartbreaking second-place finish, Wout van Aert possibly contesting GC for the first time at a Grand Tour, and Movistar’s Nairo Quintana back in the peloton after his suspension for a positive Tramadol test.

A 33-day break then follows – two days more than normal – for Pogacar to recover before attempting Grand Tour #2 of the year, which starts 29th June.

And it’s a blockbuster: pundits have pointed out that of the two riders, the 2024 Tour de France is better suited to Vingegaard, featuring numerous punishing summit finishes in a backloaded, heavily mountainous race. Most significantly, its final stage is a time-trial, a discipline in which Vingegaard dominated at last year’s edition, and which Pogačar would probably like to forget.

What does it mean for his competitors?

Speaking of Vingegaard: Visma-Lease a Bike (formerly Jumbo-Visma) revealed his 2024 schedule a few days after Pogačar, confirming he’ll contest the Tour and Vuelta again like last year. 

The Danish rider is at his peak in the toughest, highest mountains in the Alps and Pyrenees, so it was always unlikely he would risk his chances of victory in France just to take on Pogačar at the Giro. 

Theirs is a thrilling rivalry to watch and it would certainly be ideal for fans to see them go head-to-head for more than three weeks of the year – but Vingegaard seems content to leave us waiting until the showstopper event of the season.

The next question is, does Pogačar’s decision to target the Giro narrow the field of potential victors at the Tour? He’s certainly a generational talent, but doing the double is a tough ask even for him. Do Primož Roglič and Remco Evenepoel – both nailed-on to race the Tour – have a better shot at the maillot jaune if Pogačar overstretches himself in the first GT of the year?

What does it mean for racing across 2024?

The downside is the possibility that racing could be less competitive. Pogačar went into last year’s Tour having barely recovered from his wrist fracture, so it was always going to be an uphill struggle for him to take on Vingegaard. With three hard weeks of racing behind him, this year’s Tour could be a similar story – although UAE and the man himself clearly don’t think so.

Racing at the Spring Classics will also be more open, with the Slovenian skipping most of them including his Tour of Flanders defence – with the exception of Liège-Bastogne-Liège – to fit in the Giro in May.

But there’s more to look forward to later in the season. Pogačar will also target the Olympics road race and the World Championships, two titles he is yet to win. The latter in particular – a hilly, punchy parcours in Zurich – looks perfectly designed for his relentless attacking style.

And in many ways Pogačar choosing to contest as much as possible in 2024, including two Grand Tours, can only be a good thing. He’s elevated the profile of the Giro even further and given himself the chance to tick even more boxes off the list of cycling’s most prestigious races.

When asked by interviewers whether he’d rather win the Giro or the Tour, he obviously said ‘Both.’ But he’s also said he’d rather win the World Championships for the first time than either of the Grand Tours.

It’s refreshing to see a top cyclist not just prioritising the Tour de France at the expense of everything else. He’s even said so explicitly: ‘I see myself skipping the Tour. Yes, it’s the biggest race in the world, but there are a lot of fun things to do in cycling.’

It’s an opinion that would have been unheard of a few years ago. Now it’s up to the rest of the peloton to make their move.

What does it mean for Pogačar’s legacy?

Beyond demonstrating that there’s more to road racing than just three weeks in July, Pogačar’s decision puts him in an elite bracket of riders to contest so many of cycling’s toughest races in one year. Only Eddy Merckx and Stephen Roche have ever won the triple crown: Giro, Tour, and world title in the same season.

None of cycling’s top athletes in recent years could do the double, not for want of trying: seven-time Grand Tour winner Chris Froome failed to win both in 2018, and Alberto Contador couldn’t manage it either. But if anyone can do it, let’s face it: it’s probably Pogi.

Pogačar stands out as a natural, impulsive rider in a peloton that largely rides in a very controlled, machinist way. His joy for racing is infectious and fans can only hope that this decision to incorporate as many races as possible will mark a shift towards other riders being more experimental in their season planning.

That would get big names to face off earlier in the season than the Tour, and shift cycling’s centre of gravity away from what has always been its biggest race.

Regardless of whether he achieves the double, Pogačar will go down in history as a rider who raced out of a genuine love for it. He encapsulates the spirit of cycling, racing as much as possible because he wants to win as much as possible.

In October he hadn’t finalised his schedule for 2024 and told Cyclingnews, ‘The heart says to do everything, but you cannot do everything’ – and not for want of trying.

His brilliance at time-trialling, one-day racing, and longer stage racing makes him a threat in every race he enters, and his punchy style has understandably led to him being compared to the best of the best like Merckx and Hinault. Coincidentally of course, two riders who claimed the Giro-Tour double.

He may not be the most tactical rider in the peloton – you could never accuse him of riding defensively or conservatively – and that may not always pay off for him. But it certainly makes him one of the best to watch.

UAE Team Emirates manager Joxean Fernández Matxin said on Monday, ‘It’s complicated to win two GTs but not impossible. And one of the riders for whom this is less complicated than for most is Tadej. I believe that with his character and his personality, he can do it. He is the special one. He is the best rider I’ve come across in my career.’

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