Tadej Pogacar may be the strong favourite heading into the 2024 Giro d’Italia, but the UAE Team Emirates rider says he is unhappy about being talked up as unbeatable.
Pogacar has been in brilliant form ahead of the opening Grand Tour of the season, earning six victories and two more podiums in just 10 days of racing.
“It’s a little bit s***, not nice, because it’s not respectful to the other riders I would say,” he said. “It’s not all about me and UAE Team Emirates, because there’s not so much difference when it comes to big mountains and long races.
“Everybody is prepared for this, every team wants to go for the victory, and I think it’s possible. In [the] media, it’s a lot of the time just bulls***.
“Maybe it’s my fault as well. I picked out only a few races this year, I prepared for them really good, and yeah I won them, but I didn’t race like the others – some preparation races, some races to build up form – I do much less race days, so you need to see the full picture.”
Pogacar also played down the impact of the pressure that comes with being the favourite.
“I think now every race I go to I’m considered as a favourite, so I just start to live like this and go to races prepared for this,” he said.
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“I always have it in mind, or as a team we have in mind that everybody races against us and we need to control the race and take the race from the start.
“I think the Giro will be the same – we will have to control more or less every day, especially in the start, because everybody will look at us. But when you have a good team around you, you don’t have so much pressure.”
Pogacar agreed with Contador’s assessment of Thomas being his main rival, also naming Romain Bardet (dsm–firmenich PostNL) as a potential contender.
“There are a lot of good guys coming here to the Giro,” he said. “In three weeks there can be a lot of surprises, a lot of young guys are coming in good shape here.
“Apart from the young guns, I think Bardet showed really good form now, and Geraint Thomas, like always, he will be good this Giro, he did good preparation.
“I think he will not disappoint in the mountains and time trials, so there’s quite a few. We will see already after the second day who is where.”
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“He’s an incredible bike rider and it’s going to be super hard to beat him,” he told Eurosport. “But we need to be confident in ourselves and our strength as our team and just do what we can because otherwise there’s no point in coming.
“We’re looking forward to that big challenge and seeing what we can do.”
Thomas added: “It will be nice to go one step higher this year. To be honest, I’m just looking forward to getting stuck into the race.
“We’ve got a strong team – see what we can do and enjoy it, because once you get to my age you realise you’re not going to do it forever.”
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