Tadej Pogacar returns to the top, winning the Tour de France

When an athlete wins a championship two years in a row, but then slips to second the next two years, it’s fair to assume that he may be starting a downswing — that he is a cut below the new champion and that he will struggle to beat him in the years ahead.

But Tadej Pogacar of Slovenia turned the tables on his rival and the defending champion, Jonas Vingegaard of Denmark, this year in the Tour de France, completing a smashing victory Sunday to take his third title.

Pogacar’s championship was confirmed in the final time trial from Monaco to Nice on Sunday. Setting off last among the Tour’s 141 surviving riders, crouched over his time trial bike — with its solid rear wheel for aerodynamics — Pogacar in the race leader’s yellow jersey rode with the confidence of a sure winner. He capped his stellar three-week run with another stage win, his sixth, finishing 1:03 ahead of Vingegaard to take the Tour by 6:17 overall.

“After two hard years in the Tour de France, always some mistakes,” Pogacar said. “This year — everything to perfection. I am super happy to win here.”

The location (Nice, not Paris) and the format (time trial, not flat stage) were unusual for a final stage, but Sunday turned out to be the same as almost every Tour finale: a coronation more than an actual contest.

Pogacar had led by 5 minutes, 14 seconds going into the day, a lead that would have required an epic meltdown or total disaster of some kind to be overhauled.

Going into the weekend, after impressive day on impressive day in the mountains of France, Pogacar held a seemingly unassailable lead of 3 minutes, 11 seconds. But there was always the chance he would melt down on the brutal Alpine climbs of the last two mountain stages. He did not, and instead extended his lead over Vingegaard, the winner of the previous two Tours.

On Friday, Pogacar attacked on a brief final climb with 5 miles to go and created a gap between him and Vingegaard. He then ran down Matteo Jorgenson of the United States, who had been up front for much of the day.

Leaving the field gasping behind him, Pogacar climbed to the ski station Isola 2000 and won the stage, his fourth of the race, and added almost two minutes to his overall lead.

Vingegaard, who was returning from broken ribs and a collarbone sustained in a crash in April, acknowledged afterward that the race was all but over, and Saturday seemed to focus more on holding second place over Remco Evenepoel of Belgium. On the final mountain of the Tour, the Col de la Couillole, the two leaders eventually left Evenepoel behind.

Vingegaard set the tempo with Pogacar glued to him. With a half-mile left, they dropped the last challenger, Richard Carapaz of Ecuador, and high in the Alps the two best riders in the Tour raced to the finish line.

There the winner was Pogacar again, accelerating away in the last couple of hundred yards, helped because Vingegaard was tired after leading for so long.

After Sunday’s time trial, Pogacar completed what is known as a double: winning the two biggest cycling tours, the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France, in the same season. He is the first to complete a double since Marco Pantani in 1998.

Of his third Tour win, Pogacar said: “This is the first one I was totally confident every day. Even in the Giro I had one bad day — I won’t tell which one.”

Leaving aside Lance Armstrong, whose seven victories from 1999 to 2005 were stripped from him after revelations of drug use, the record for most victories in the Tour is five, held by four riders. Pogacar’s three tied him for sixth place.

Carapaz won the polka-dot jersey as best climber, Evenepoel won the white jersey as best young rider and Biniam Girmay of Eritrea, who had earlier in the race become the first Black African to win a Tour stage, won the green jersey as best sprinter.

Either Pogacar or Vingegaard has now won the last five yellow jerseys, and they have finished one-two the past four years. At ages 25 and 27, there is no reason to think their battles won’t continue for some years to come.

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