It was raining a lot on the edge of Valence after stage 17 of the Tour de France in July. After days of baking heat, the sky had turned black on the edge of the Ardèche; if real life was a school English essay, the phrase pathetic fallacy would be on everyone’s lips. The world’s biggest bike race has a habit of bringing everyone back down to earth, metaphorically as well as literally, as the majesty of Mont Ventoux the previous day was followed by a sprint on an arterial road, hemmed in by grey offices.
The sense of doom was increased by the chaos at the finish, where a prankster had somehow got onto the course, and a crash in the final kilometre which led to a handful of riders contesting for the win, which went to Jonathan Milan.
Or so we thought. In an interview this week, his UAE Team Emirates-XRG colleague Tim Wellens revealed that Pogačar visited hospital that evening due to knee pain, and that there were fears that he would have to leave the race. It is remarkable that this didn’t come out before, given the world we live in, but I like the mystery, the intrigue.
News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly thoughts on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com – should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.
Of course, his departure didn’t come to pass – the Slovenian went on, kept his yellow jersey through the Alps, and won by over four minutes in Paris. It was clear in the last days of the Tour that this was a different Pogačar, however, one who didn’t win on Ventoux, on the Col de la Loze, or in La Plagne.
This did not pass unnoticed; in every press conference in that final week, Pogačar was asked some variation of the question ‘what’s up?’ or ‘are you bored?’ from the assembled press. The answer, though, was not “my knee hurts” but instead that he was tired, maybe a bit bored, and done with the rigmarole of racing and leading the Tour de France.
“I ask myself why I’m still here – it’s so long these three weeks,” he said after stage 18. “You count the kilometres to Paris and yes, I can’t wait for it to be over so I can do some other nice stuff in my life as well.”
“I’m obviously tired,” Pogačar added the next day in La Plagne. “It’s not been an easy Tour. People attacking me from left and right, from day one until the end. Being focused, motivated. The priority is the yellow jersey, so I was counting down the kilometres because I was going with my pace and hoping that nobody would attack from behind, and that’s it. Sometimes you just count down the kilometres.”
However, this might have been hiding the real issue. As Wellens explained: “It was a relief that he didn’t give up in the mountains. Everyone wondered why he wasn’t attacking, which is understandable… Afterwards we worried about him physically, but mentally I was surprised to read he wanted to go home, because we actually had a great time together.”
Clearly, it was important to keep the knee issue a secret. There were still four minutes between Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard in second place after stage 17, but the news of a weakened Pogačar might have re-energised Visma-Lease a Bike in the final two mountain stages. Perhaps there was a weakness there to be exploited, although a complete reversal seems unlikely, given the lead and how exhausted everyone was.
Maybe Pogačar was bluffing over his mental state, hiding the true problem. It certainly was a convenient, easy excuse, but like the best cover stories, there was more than a ring of truth to it. He did seem exhausted, and done, and who could blame him. Especially if his knee hurt. A few months later, the Slovenian was back in Valence, winning the European Championships – there was a smile this time.
The Tour incident is a useful reminder that we can’t know everything, not even what’s going on with the best, most famous cyclist in the world. That’s no bad thing. It also raises questions for the future: how is the knee? Are you bluffing? It’s something to think about next time we’re on a rainy ringroad in the middle of France.
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