(Nice) Tadej Pogacar didn’t need to attack on the final stage of the Tour de France, but defensiveness wasn’t in his vocabulary during the race and he couldn’t resist another attack.
Pogacar won the Tour de France for a third time and celebrated his triumph by winning the final stage — a time trial ending in Nice on Sunday.
The 25-year-old Slovenian became the first cyclist since the late Marco Pantani in 1998 to win the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia in the same year.
“To win both races in the same year is on another level,” Pogacar said. “I think this is the first Grand Tour where I was fully confident every day. Even at the Giro, I remember having a bad day. This year, the Tour de France was just extraordinary. I enjoyed it from the first day.”
Two-time defending champion Jonas Vingegaard took second overall. The Dane also finished second in Sunday’s stage.
Pogacar completed the 34 kilometres from Monaco to Nice in 45 minutes 24 seconds. Vingegaard needed 1:03 more. Belgian Remco Evenepoel completed the podium of the stage, 1:14 behind the winner.
In the overall standings, Vingegaard finished 6:17 behind Pogacar. Evenepoel also took third place at 9:18.
PHOTO JEROME DELAY, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar (in yellow)
I am very happy. I can’t describe how happy I am, after two difficult years at the Tour de France. This year, everything has been perfect.
Tadej Pogacar
Ontario’s Derek Gee finished sixth in the final stage, 2:31 behind the winner, and finished the lap in ninth position, 27:21 behind Pogacar. Quebec’s Hugo Houle finished the final stage in 50e position, 5:40 from the lead. He also finished the round at 50e rank, at 3:26:55 from Pogacar.
Pogacar also won the Tour de France in 2020 and 2021.
The Tour de France did not finish in Paris as is traditional because of the Olympic Games, which officially begin in the French capital on Friday.
Early Sunday morning, supporters camped near Nice’s popular Promenade des Anglais to secure a viewing spot for the cyclists.
After an explosive attack on Friday, Pogacar had said he would not try to win Saturday’s stage. However, he could not resist the temptation and this victory allowed him to become the second cyclist to win five mountain stages in the same Tour after Italian Gino Bartali in 1948.
Pogacar didn’t need to push on Sunday either, already with a lead of more than five minutes over Vingegaard. He once again gave in to temptation and sped along the picturesque roads of Eze and Villefranche-sur-Mer, on the approach to Nice.
The Slovenian showed three fingers as he approached the finish for his sixth stage victory of the Tour, the same number of stages won during his Giro triumph.
The fight with Vingegaard might have been closer this year under different circumstances. The 27-year-old Dane was hospitalized for almost two weeks in April after a crash during the Tour of the Basque Country. He only returned to competition at the Tour de France.
“Under normal circumstances I would have been disappointed with my Tour de France, but after everything I’ve been through I can’t be disappointed,” Vingegaard said. “I would have liked to go a little further, but that’s how it is. I would like to come back to the Tour de France next year and win it again. I think the yellow jersey is the most beautiful jersey in road cycling.”
Ecuadorian Richard Carapaz won the polka dot jersey for best climber while Eritrean Biniam Girmay took the green jersey for best sprinter. Evenepoel, 24, finished with the white jersey for best young rider.
“I feel like I’m floating on a cloud. It’s a lot of fun,” Girmay said. “I just want to tell the young kids to keep working hard and that anything is possible.”