Slovenian Tadej Pogacar. Abaca Press

Tadej Pogacar's Tour de France win gives him historic double

By Sai Mohan | Last updated Jul 22, 2024 4:46 AM ET

Tadej Pogacar entered the 2024 Tour de France as the overwhelming favorite after his dominant win at the Giro d'Italia in May. The Slovenian lived up to the hype, winning the stage 21 time trial into Nice on Sunday — his sixth stage win at this year's Tour — to complete the historic double of cycling.

Pogacar became the first rider since Italy's Marco Pantani in 1998 to win cycling's two biggest races in the same year. With six stage wins over two weeks, Pogacar also had the most dominant haul since Mark Cavendish in 2009 — an enormous feat for any rider, let alone a general classification rider. Furthermore, he became the first rider to win five mountain stage wins in a single edition of the Tour since 1948.

The last time a rider won the Giro-Tour double (Marco Pantani, 1998), Il Giro started from Nice. Today, Tadej Pogacar will do that too and Le Tour ends in Nice. Somehow, it feels like it's come full circle. Nice. #TdF2024 pic.twitter.com/ygQNXrQg1R
— Mihai Simion (@faustocoppi60) July 21, 2024

Ultimately, it was fitting for Pogacar to win the Tour's finale 63 seconds clear of second-placed Jonas Vingegaard, the two-time reigning champion who denied the Slovenian in 2022 and 2023. Over the last two years, Team Visma's Vingegaard had certain advantages as he edged out Team UAE's Pogacar for the yellow jersey in back-to-back editions of the Tour. This year, Pogacar got his sweet revenge.

With his third Tour title, Pogacar etched his name in the history books as one of the best riders of the 21st century. He now trails only four-time winner Chris Froome, and four other five-time winners — Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain — for most Tour wins.

2020
2021
2024 #TDF2024 pic.twitter.com/wlCFY4Me1R
— Tour de France™ (@LeTour) July 21, 2024

The cycling world will take years to truly fathom what Pogacar achieved at the 2024 Tour. Besides setting a historic pace for his ascents of the Galibier and Col de la Couillole, Pogacar produced the greatest climbing performance of all time on the Plateau de Beille. The latter was particularly stunning since it was hailed the most arduous mountain stage ever with 123.3 miles and 5,071 meters of elevation gain.

If Pogacar can win his fourth Tour title next year, he will challenge Eddy Merckx for the GOAT title.

Sai Mohan

A veteran sportswriter based in Portugal, Sai covers the NBA for Yardbarker and a few local news outlets. He had the honor of covering sporting events across four different continents as a newspaper reporter. Some of his all-time favorite athletes include Mike Tyson, Larry Bird, Luís Figo, Ayrton Senna and Steffi Graf.

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