Tadej Pogacar Claims Second Straight Tour de France Title

For Pogacar, the game started on June 30, when he won a first individual time trial in the fifth stage. Three days later, the peloton was in the Alps, and Pogacar was already winning the game, ripping through his adversaries on Stage 8 and grabbing the yellow jersey. He never gave it up.

That day, he said he had told his teammates that they should “try to break the race.” And break the race he did: Pogacar’s lead of 1 minute 48 seconds at the end of the eighth stage had grown to more than five minutes by the time the race hit southern France four days later.

Although Pogacar argued that the race was not over, many knew then how it would end.

In the penultimate stage on Saturday, Pogacar rode across the vineyards of the Bordeaux region with a mix of prudence and distraction, confident that, this time, the final time trial would not be a game changer.

A year ago, he had used a similar race against the clock to turn the tables in the final weekend of the race. This year, the job, for all intents and purposes, was already done when he rolled off the starting line. Now he just had to close it out, avoid disaster, defend an insurmountable lead — and then carry it into Paris and claim his prize.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/18/sports/cycling/pogacar-wins-tour-de-france.html