Rock star Pogacar on song for treble
TADEJ POGACAR only lost a stage on last month’s Tour of Slovenia when he was caught between a rock and a hard race.
Approaching the finish with team-mate Rafal Majka, the pair settled the honours for first under the transponder with a bizarre game of scissors, paper, stone.
As cycling’s ultimate endurance test begins in Copenhagen today, though, and Pogacar goes for a hat-trick of Tour de France titles, he will be determined to show his pain threshold is higher than ever.
According to local legend, Pogacar once resolved to demonstrate his resistance to pain by placing his hand, palm-down, on the searing heat of his mother’s stove hotplate.At 23 he will be the man to catch – and only a handful of riders in the 176-man field are capable of living with him.
Tour legend Eddy Merckx has tipped Pogacar to break many of his records, branding him “the new Cannibal” – the Belgian’s nickname – and the Slovenian said: “What he achieved on the Tour de France is exceptional but I don’t think about records and races I might win. If I don’t win them, I’ll not stress myself.”