Resurgent Tadej Pogacar set for Tour de France duel with road-rusty Jonas Vingegaard

PARIS – The Tour de France sets off from Florence on June 29, with Tadej Pogacar prepped for a battle royale with defending champion Jonas Vingegaard on a route designed to take the world’s greatest bike race down to the wire.

Team UAE’s Slovenian rider Pogacar heads into the 21-day race in red-hot form after winning the Giro d’Italia in May.

On the other hand, Visma’s Vingegaard – the two-time defending champion from Denmark – has not raced since suffering multiple fractures in a fall in March.

It is too early to have a clear favourite, but Vingegaard’s condition offers Pogacar a chance at revenge for the brutal manner in which the Dane crushed him on two Alpine stages late in the 2023 edition.

“I’ve tested my legs a little and to be honest, I’ve never felt so good on a bike,” said Pogacar, a back-to-back Tour winner in 2020 and 2021.

“It’s already my fifth time coming to the Tour and I’m really excited about it. Everyone thinks that I’m going to win the Tour every year, but I didn’t win the last two times.”

While Pogacar dislikes heat and high altitude, Vingegaard is the man on the back foot due to the punctured lung and broken ribs he suffered in that March accident.

“Jonas was really badly injured, but I think he’ll be okay. If he is feeling mentally strong and has made a good recovery he will be at his top level,” Pogacar added.

The main concern for Vingegaard is that he will need to be competitive, not only fit, from the very outset of the race if he is to stand a chance to win a third straight title.

“Being fit, is, of course something else than being in shape or competitive,” admitted Visma director Merijn Zeeman. “In any case, Jonas is fit. He really worked extremely hard.”

Behind these chalk-and-cheese rivals is a bevvy of pretenders awaiting the slightest slip from the contenders.

Veteran Primoz Roglic of Slovenia has won the Vuelta a Espana and the Giro in his career and will be riding the Tour in the colours of new sponsor Red Bull, with a new contract worth €6 million (S$8.7 million) a year.

Also in the mix is the impossible-to-ignore talent of Belgian Remco Evenepoel (Quick Step), who will target the two time trials and the gravel roads on what should be an enthralling Tour debut for the 24-year-old targeting the best young rider jersey.

“We saw that Remco and Primoz were in good shape in the Dauphine (in June) and I reckon they’ll be at their best. But you never know. Last year I thought I was 100 per cent,” Pogacar said.

The route crosses the Alps twice with seven mountain slogs, features a first-ever race on white gravel and ends with an eye-catching individual time trial along the French Riviera.

The mountain stages, which include four high-altitude finales, with the highest at 2,802m on Stage 19, will be to the liking of Vingegaard.

The first four days are drenched with Italian colour, starting with the Renaissance beauty of Florence before the race crosses the Rubicon river, takes in the seaside sights at Rimini, passes along the Via Romagna road into Bologna and eventually moves out of Fiat capital Turin towards France for the remaining 17 stages.

Instead of the traditional parade round Paris on the final day for the 21st stage, a timetable clash with the 2024 Olympic Games in the French capital sent the organisers looking elsewhere.

In place of the sprint up and down the Champs-Elysees, the stage is now an individual 34.5km time trial along the coastline corniches between Monaco and Nice.

The 2024 Tour will see Mark Cavendish, who has delayed retirement, being one of the main attractions as he bids to beat his record of 34 stage wins that he shares with Belgian great Eddy Merckx.

But ultimately, all eyes will be on Pogacar, aiming to become the first rider in 26 years to win the Giro and Tour in the same season.

Should he pull off the ambitious feat, he will join a list of legends in Fausto Coppi, Jacques Anquetil, Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Stephen Roche, Miguel Indurain and Marco Pantani, the last man to achieve the double in 1998. AFP, REUTERS