Roglic aims to stop Pogacar from taking 3rd Tour
Primoz Roglic must find a way to stop his Slovenian rival Tadej Pogacar from winning the Tour de France for the third straight time.
Pogacar is the firm favorite to win the threeweek race, which starts in Denmark on Friday and ends in Paris on July 24.
Pogacar won TirrenoAdriatico and the UAE Tour this year, and showed his class with an unprecedented long-distance solo attack to win the Strade Bianche in March — despite being involved in a crash early on in the one-day race.
“I think my shape is good, not too much different compared to last year,” Pogacar said Thursday. “I feel more confident, I also feel stronger, but we'll see in the race if it’s true or not.”
But Roglic also impressed when he won the Criterium du Dauphine stage race this month to add to his dramatic victory at the ParisNice in March.
Roglic was brilliantly aided at the Dauphine by his Jumbo-Visma teammate Jonas Vingegaard, a climbing ace who is also quick. Vingegaard was visibly moved when Danish fans chanted his name at Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen on Wednesday. They will cheer him again in Friday’s opening time trial around Denmark’s capital city.
“As long as we work together, we believe we can beat [Pogacar],” Roglic said. “We are a strong team and we have a lot of qualities.”
Jumbo-Visma has Vingegaard, last year’s Tour runner-up, as a co-leader in case Roglic fades, while Pogacar remains the outright No. 1 on the UAE Team Emirates lineup.
Roglic has won the past three Spanish Vueltas, but is widely remembered for his soul-crushing defeat to Pogacar on the 2020
Tour.
Dutch rider Steven Kruijswijk and American Sepp Kuss will help Roglic in the mountains. He will need it against Pogacar, who also twice won the polka-dot jersey for best climber.
Meanwhile, teammate Wout van Aert eyes the green jersey for best sprinter. But the one-day classics specialist and former cyclo-cross world champion is nursing a sore kneecap.
Another threat is Australian rider Ben O’Connor, who finished fourth in 2021.
ROUTE
The race features the return of Paris-Roubaix’s cobblestones and six mountain stages with five summit finishes, including the famed Alpe d’Huez ascent with its 21 hairpins.
Before reaching the heights, the peloton discovers Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid during Friday’s eight-mile clock race.
“We have decided that I’ll be the third rider from the team to start. This is the most comfortable way,” Pogacar said. “I don’t think I can win it, but I’ll give the maximum and it’s not too long.”
The second stage is for sprinters, 125 miles from the port city of Roskilde to Nyborg in central Denmark.
It could be windy, like Stage 3, which starts from Vejle on the Jutland Peninsula and ends in Sonderborg in southern Denmark after 113 miles of flats.
After a travel day, riders tackle on Tuesday five small climbs on the route from the French coastal city of Dunkerque to Calais.
Treacherous cobbles follow on Stage 5 and then a mountaintop finish at the Planche des Belles Filles awaits on Stage 7. Pogacar grabbed the yellow jersey there in 2020 by crushing Roglic in a dramatic time trial on the eve of the finish.
The Pyrenees have daunting climbs to Peyragudes ski resort and Hautacam.
The penultimate stage is an exciting 25-mile time trial to the clifftop village of Rocamadour in southcentral France.
The women’s Tour starts from the Eiffel Tower on July 24 and has eight stages, including a prestigious finish at Planche des Belles Filles.