Being an old cycling cynic has ruined my enjoyment of Pogačar’s once-in-a-lifetime Giro d’Italia dominance.
It’s the final weekend of the 2024 Giro d’Italia and Tadej Pogačar owns the maglia rosa with a 10-minute lead on his nearest rival. He’s just won his sixth stage, and he did it at a canter that slowed to a trot.
Whilst the rivals he crushed looked alla frutta, as they say in Italy, he looked fresh as a bright pink daisy (a peony?). He rode up and down the line, casually chatting orders to teammates who were draped over the bars in abject suffering. He took a bidon from a soigneur and handed it to a child running roadside – what need for refreshment on an easy day out? The final few kilometres of the stage offered time to relax a little more, to wave and showboat for the adoring fans.
In the post-stage interview he was already thinking ahead to the Tour de France. For any other rider the Giro win would be the peak of the season, perhaps of the palmarès. For Pogačar it was a fun new way to prepare for July.
A season of unstoppable attacks
And it’s not just his Giro performance that dropped my jaw in disbelief. He’s been this way all season. At Strade Bianchi and Liege Bastogne Liege he announced in advance the exact points at which he would would launch his winning attacks. And when those attacks duly arrived, nobody could hold his wheel. Those that tried lasted barely 10 seconds before they blew, as if motor-pacing behind a throttle-happy soigneur who was late home for his dinner.
I should be enjoying this sporting spectacle. I should be like everyone else appears to be: entertained, in awe of this truly fantastical performance. Cycling has found a generational talent, a wunderkind turned superman. His Giro feat is cycling history, a ride for the ages, one we’ll look back on and ponder if we’ll ever see the likes again. I want to be part of the collective joy, and yet I can’t let myself go.
I’ve been burned and I’ve learned
I’ve been a cycling fan since the 1989 Tour de France. Over the decades I’ve been burnt and I’ve learned. Cycling has shown me enough that I don’t take it too seriously as a pure sporting event. It’s entertainment much as my other favourite, American football. I never let my sceptical guard down. I watch races mainly because I always have. It’s tradition, entertainment and, mostly, good fun. But it’s not real life.
Fignon was my first true, cycling love. I revelled in Riis’ toying with, and toppling of, Indurain. I was awed by the brute diesel power of the young East German Ullrich. I delighted in pure-climber Pantani’s poetic prowess. I cheered them on, each and every one, and each and every one either failed a doping test or later admitted their guilt. They weren’t the outliers either; they were dopers in a sport built on doping. By Tour win three of Armstrong’s seven I had come to accept that cycling was a case of ‘may the best doctor win’.
But then, was it just me or did it not seem that cycling had reset? In recent years, despite increased speeds, the sport has somehow appeared a lot more believable. The relentless churn of scandal has certainly gone, the internet innuendo has died a death, and a new generation of fans cheer on their heroes with a clean conscience.
A racehorse among donkeys
So what is it about Pogačar and this year’s Giro that’s got me so vexed?
I realise the (still) young Slovenian has shown talent since he was a child. This is not some donkey turned racehorse, a la Froome. However, he’s a racehorse who’s just spent three weeks making 200 other professional athletes look like donkeys. He gave the impression of a pro who’s turned up to piss about at a local amateur race, showing off to the third-cats and juniors.
He’s won with an astonishing insouciance, clearly holding energy in reserve for the rest of the season. And he’s not the first rider to dominate his rivals, but at least Froome had the decency to look like he was turning himself inside out as he spun that silly oval chainring.
Not that Pogačar’s rivals seem to mind being so easily, breezily crushed. They all love him for it, and the more unbeatable he gets, the more they laugh in happy wonder. I’d say they love him in the way that puny kids laugh at the big bully’s jokes, but he seems genuinely likeable. “Poggy” they affectionately call him as they pick themselves up off the concrete, pick at scraps that have fallen from his table.
The men behind the man
But whilst he utterly dominates, there’s not even a hint of innuendo or suspicion – and I have none of my own to offer beyond a performance that fails the (non-WADA ratified) cynic’s eye test. Fans and the media alike accept that this is how it is, some kind of unnatural natural order. I might be able to accept it too if it didn’t look so utterly unbelievable.
I might be able to if his team wasn’t run by Mauro Gianetti and Joxean ‘Matxin’ Fernandez – two men with a dark cycling history, responsible for bringing us the likes of Iban Mayo, Juan José Cobo, Leonardo Piepoli, and Riccardo Ricco. Doper, doper, doper, and doper.
Will the Tour be the cure?
Perhaps the Tour will settle my unease. Vinegaard, Roglic and Evenepoel will all be fully recovered. A four-way battle will ensue, Pogačar will show some signs of Giro fatigue and he’ll appear less of an outlier. Or, perhaps he’ll cruise through that one too, add yellow to pink and follow Contador’s advice and make a run (saunter) at La Vuelta’s maillot rojo.
Whatever happens next, it’s going to take me a long time to accept what I’ve seen at this year’s Giro. Perhaps I never will and that will mean missing out on enjoyment of this once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. I hope that’s the case.
Whilst cycling might have moved on from the bad old days, it’s undeniable that I’m still an old cynic. But it’s not my fault. Cycling made me this way.
Rolf Rae-Hansen 