Tadej Pogačar clinched a historic Giro d’Italia-Tour de France double on Sunday. But even while the Slovenian star was visibly delighted to take another giant step towards all-time greatness in the sport, the UAE Team Emirates leader also denied that he was especially interested in studying his own achievements in terms of pure cycling statistics. Speaking in the winner’s press conference late on Sunday evening, Pogačar was told that amongst other new records, his lead from stage 4 to the finish in Nice was the longest unbroken period in yellow in a single Tour de France in 63 years.
Did he regret letting go of the yellow jersey for a single day, he was asked - as happened after he ceded the lead captured on stage 2 to Richard Carapaz on stage 3 in Turin, prior to regaining it in the Alps - and did breaking records or making history give him a particular motivation in cycling? Pogačar instantly turned the question on its head, saying that in fact while he had always been interested in statistics and records, it was other riders’ that caught his attention, not his own. “Let’s talk about Mark Cavendish’s record for a second,” he told reporters by way of example, referring to the Briton’s 35th stage win in the 2024 Tour de France. “This is impressive, everybody wanted him to win more and he never gave up, he went for it, he went for history in the end.
“At first he was not thinking about the record, but then in the last few years when he was winning in .