Pogacar Wins Historic Giro-Tour Double
Tadej Pogacar followed in the wake of the late Marco Pantani, sealing the first Giro d’Italia-Tour de France double of the 21st century in swaggering style, with victory in the final time trial of the 2024 Tour, in Nice.
Pogacar now joins an elite club of double winners, but none have achieved this feat in the modern era, or with such swagger. Over the two Grand Tours, totalling almost 7,000 kilometers, his accumulative lead has been well over 16 minutes, and he has spent 39 days as either Giro or Tour leader.
The last battle between the 2024 Tour’s top trio, Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard, the outgoing champion, and debutant Remco Evenepoel, came on the corniche roads of the Cote d’Azur, but stuck to the script, with the Slovenian once again dominating the outcome.
In the time trial from Monaco to Nice, Pogacar beat Vingegaard by 1:03 and Evenepoel by 1:14 to win overall from the Dane, champion in 2022 and 2023, by 6:17.
Pantani’s Giro-Tour double came 25 years ago, in a chaotic and corrupt era, blighted by unrelenting doping scandals. But Pogacar’s comes in different times, in a highly-commercialized and technologically-driven sport, globalized by Netflix, dominated by nation state sponsors, that has also embraced success stories from new territories, such as Slovenia, Eritrea and Ecuador.
Pogacar is this era’s uber-champion, the freestyling boy-racer to whom the Netflix generation is increasingly drawn. Pantani’s Giro-Tour double came before he was even born. As his time trial performance demonstrated, he is loved by fans because he never lets up.
Pogacar won the 33.7-km individual time trial from Monaco to Nice in a time of 45 minutes and 24 seconds, destroying his rivals with a gap of one minute and three seconds over Vingegaard, winner of the last two Tours.
