It’s an ambitious double that hasn’t been completed since 1998, but for nearly everyone, Tadej Pogačar is the raging hot favourite going into the 2024 Tour de France, just over a month removed from winning the Giro d’Italia.
Everything appears to be going Tadej Pogačar’s way, except one thing, that he’s attempting one of the most arduous endurance feats in modern sport.
Marco Pantani, a year prior to being chucked out of the Giro d’Italia for suspicious hematocrit levels, was the last man to win the Giro-Tour back in 1998, before Pogačar was even born. Both were entertainers of the highest level, peerless climbers, but few would argue that Pantani had the same all-round capabilities as the sensational Slovenian. He was the last to achieve ‘the double’, and that was a different era of the sport… Lance Armstrong would finish atop the podium for the next seven editions of the Tour.
Others have gone close, most recently Chris Froome (1st and 3rd) and Tom Dumoulin (2nd and 2nd) both podiumed in the 2018 Giro and Tour. But the task is not one willingly taken on, and is regarded too hard for most, and you can see the way it is viewed by the adaptations to Pogačar’s schedule of racing and training.
UAE Team Emirates have taken a meticulous approach to the season restricting Pogačar to just 10 days racing ahead of the Giro d’Italia. He was clearly doing a ton of training around those race days though as he was flying during that period, taking six stage or one-day wins, and the Volta Catalunya overall.
The Giro went great, there were no crashes to complain of for the Slovenian, he wasn’t pushed hard in a slog to take the overall win, but still showed that he was in great shape, winning six stages and the overall by just shy of ten minutes.
