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