The day after the announcement of his first participation in the Tour of Italy, the Slovenian displayed his ambition to win the first two Grand Tours of the season on Monday.
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Double ration for the most gluttonous of the bunch. Tadej Pogacar announced, Monday December 18, that he would aim for victory in the Tour of Italy and the Tour de France in 2024. “That It has always been a dream to race the Giro. I’m older now, I think I can handle two Grand Tours“, justified the 25-year-old Slovenian. “Ihe will clearly aim for victory“, supported his manager at UAE Joxean Fernandez Matxin.
“At the Tour I want to regain the number 1 place“, insisted Pogacar, who has already won the race in 2020 and 2021, but lost to his rival, Jonas Vingegaard, in the 2022 and 2023 editions. He will, however, discover the Giro. The insatiable Slovenian has always stated the objective of registering the three Grand Tours on his list by the end of his career (he has not yet won the Vuelta, which he finished in 3rd place during its only participation in 2019).
Winning both the Giro and the Grande Boucle in the same year is a performance that has not been achieved since 1998, by Marco Pantani at the time. The content of the feat lies in the physical and mental demand of completing these two three-week races, spaced only one month apart. For Pogacar, the task promises to be all the more difficult as he will also be able to aim for the gold medal in the road race at the Paris Olympic Games on August 4.
“We reduced our schedule at the start of the season“, specified Matxin. To be fresher, the rider will not be present on the UAE Tour, Paris-Nice or Tirreno-Adriatico, and will not aim for the Tour of Flanders.
