Tadej Pogačar is anticipated to proceed his dominance of the 2024 season at Il Lombardia on Saturday and will win a fourth consecutive version of the Italian monument and his twenty fifth victory of the season.
His dominance of the World Championships and his 100km assault once more sparked comparisons with Eddy Merckx. But the Slovenian’s dominance has additionally sparked unfounded suspicion and questions, simply as up to now with different riders within the darkest period of the game.
Whereas talking about his unimaginable 2024 season and Saturday’s Il Lombardia on Friday afternoon, two French video crews put inquiries to the UAE Crew Emirates chief, one referring to a current response from Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme.
Regional French newspaper La Dépêche du Midi requested Prudhomme: If in the future you realized that he (Pogačar) was doping, would you be shocked, dissatisfied, disgusted?
Prudhomme reportedly replied: “Given the previous of biking and never so distant previous, your query isn’t illegitimate. I would not have a solution.”
Pogačar didn’t totally perceive the query when Prudhomme’s feedback had been put to him however he gave a prolonged reply.
He ended by saying: “There are at all times people who find themselves jealous and suspicious and there is nothing I can do about it.”
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His ideas had been extra elaborate.
“Biking is a sport the place up to now, individuals had been doing the whole lot they might to their our bodies, to be higher, unknowing what it does to your well being, they usually had been risking their life,” he mentioned.
“A number of guys that you do not even know, not even the winners, are most likely now sick or have another well being issues or psychological issues due to what they had been doing to their our bodies up to now 20 or 30 years.
“In my sincere opinion, my humble opinion. I believe biking suffered quite a bit from these years. There was no belief and it was as much as us the cyclists to regain the belief. However there’s nothing we are able to do. We simply race our personal race, and we hope that folks will begin to imagine us.
“You’ll want to have a winner and at all times a winner will get probably the most eyes on him that he is a cheater. Perhaps in just a few generations, individuals will overlook in regards to the previous, about Armstrong and these guys, that had been doing what they had been doing, and possibly they are going to transfer on.
“From my private expertise, I believe biking is likely one of the finest sports activities […] the place individuals need to be extra wholesome and no more unhealthy, only for the efficiency.
“We now realise that biking is a extremely harmful sport. Like with an accident together with your coronary heart, you can’t push it over the restrict, you want to keep wholesome. And if you wish to danger your well being for a 10-year profession, it is a waste of your life and it may be silly.
Responding to a different query about suspicion of his dominance, Pogačar made a wider consideration.
“You see domination in all places. You see domination within the enterprise world, you see domination in tennis, in golf, within the NBA, in soccer,” he mentioned.
“In some other sport, you see domination from groups and from particular person athletes. I believe there’s at all times domination for just a few years, a most of some years after which in some unspecified time in the future, a brand new expertise comes alongside, a brand new hungrier man, a brand new and higher group. There is a technology change and there can be another person dominating. It is like that in life.”
Cyclingnews will report Pogačar’s touch upon Il Lombardia in a separate story.
