Who can challenge in the age of Pogacar?

TADEJ POGACAR will start the Tour de France as the overwhelming favourite to wear yellow in Paris once again.

This, it seems, is the age of Pogacar. Since that day, 21 months ago, when he wrested yellow away from his fellow Slovenian Primoz Roglic on the penultimate day of the 2020 Tour, he has carried the air of the unbeatable.

Laid-back, affable, yet indefatigable, Pogacar (pictured) has won seven of the eight stage races he has entered since, only settling for a podium finish in last year’s Tour of the Basque

Country, and made securing his second consecutive Tour title 12 months ago look like a breeze.

He has also proven his oneday credentials with victories in Il Lombardia and StradeBianche, and top-five finishes at the Olympics, Milan-Sanremo and the Tour of Flanders.

Now he returns to France looking to join the elite club of riders with three or more Tour crowns. Only eight men have done it before. Pogacar, aged just 23, aims to make it nine.

Such has been Pogacar’s dominance, it is easy to forget how new all this is, how small the sample size.

The feeling was that Roglic lost, as much as Pogacar won, the 2020 Tour. Roglic bossed the race for 11 days, only for it to fall apart on that desperate time trial on La Planche des Belles Filles.

Since then Pogacar has seemed on a different level, but Roglic has twice won the Vuelta a Espana, and we have only seen the two go head to head in stage races twice – Roglic beat Pogacar in the Basque Country last year while his Tour de France bid was curtailed by an early crash.

So how much does separate the two Slovenians? Can Roglic, 32, regain the upper hand on a rider he seemed to act like the big brother to in 2020 before being upstaged at the last?

Dani Martinez will be afforded his chance, though a Tour with plenty of time trial kilometres and the cobbles of northern France should suit Geraint Thomas, while Adam Yates is still seeking a Grand Tour result to match the potential the 29-year-old showed as a youngster.

The battle for yellow seems certain to dominate even more than usual in a Tour which has only a handful of sprint opportunities, and which has no Mark Cavendish to boot.

Fabio Jakobsen, who got the nod ahead of Cavendish, may well feel pressure to justify the team’s decision. World champion Julian Alaphilippe is also missing after his horror crash at Liege-Bastogne-Liege, another reason all eyes will be on the fight to prove Pogacar is not infallible.