Pogacar on brink of stunning Tour win

TADEJ Pogacar of Slovenia is set for a shock victory in the Tour de France after an extraordinary performance in the 36.2 kilometre individual time trial to La Planche des Belles Filles to grab the final yellow jersey of this year’s race from a struggling Primoz Roglic.

In a stunning turnaround, Pogacar, the UAE Team Emirates rider, is on the brink of becoming the youngest winner in a century and the second youngest in history after shattering the 57 seconds advantage of friend and compatriot Roglic ahead of today’s procession into Paris.

In what was a sporting collapse on a grand scale, Roglic, overall leader of the Tour since stage nine, never got into a rhythm and steadily lost time through every intermediate check to let slip almost two minutes to his young rival.

‘I think I’m dreaming. I don’t know what to say. It’s unbelievable,’ said 21-year-old Pogacar who is racing his first Tour. ‘My dream was just to be on the Tour, now I have won. I’m here and now there’s only the last stage. It is unbelievable.’

He revealed that he had always targeted the time trial as a chance to cause an upset. ‘I’m really proud of the team,’ he said, ‘they had real confidence in me. They did such a big effort. To get the yellow jersey on t he fi nal day i s what we dreamed from t he start. We achieved that and it’s amazing.

‘We did a reconnaissance and I knew every corner, every pothole in the road, I knew when to accelerate and that’s congrats to all the team. I pushed to the end and I made it.’

Today’s stage to the Champs-Elysees is a mere formality that will be contested only by the Tour’s sprinters. Ireland’s Sam Bennett leads Peter Sagan in the fight for the green jersey.