MILAN — Two-time Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar will race the Giro d’Italia for the first time in his career in 2024.
The Slovenian cyclist made the announcement together with Giro organisers, who said that Pogacar still plans to ride the Tour in 2024.
UAE rider Pogacar, 25, will complete his collection of Grand Tours after also competing in the 2019 Vuelta a Espana, where he finished third.
“Andiamo (Let’s go),” Pogacar said in a brief video posted on social media according to AP.
Pogacar won the Tour in 2020 and 2021 and finished runner-up to Jonas Vingegaard in the last two editions. He has never competed in the Giro.
No rider has won the Giro and Tour in the same year since Marco Pantani accomplished the double in 1998.
Next year´s Giro starts near Turin on May 4 and ends in Rome next to the Colosseum on May 26.
The Tour de France starts in Florence just over a month later – the first of four stages in Italy – before the Olympic Games commence in Paris on July 26.
Pogacar had already speculated about the possibility of competing in both races, and the Italian race will be his first.
He has finally decided to try his luck in 2024. It is clear that this will be a very different way of preparing for the French race, as he will arrive with many more days of competition and greater fatigue, but it is a challenge that he has agreed with his team, the UAE Emirates Team.
Some cyclists have tried it, such as Chris Froome in 2018, who won the Giro d’Italia and finished third in the Tour, Tom Dumoulin, who finished second in both races in the same edition, or Alberto Contador in 2015, who succeeded in the Giro d’Italia in 2015 but only managed a top 10 in the Tour, far from winning the French race.
Pogacar’s decision comes as a surprise, as a significant part of the season has been focused on being as competitive as possible in the Tour de France, with only a few days of competition before the start of the Grand Boucle. This will be a new way of competing for him.
The last four editions have been focused on his fight for victory in France, with a direct confrontation with Jonas Vingeggard.
Pogacar had put a lot of emphasis on the spring classics such as the Tour of Flanders, the Amstel Gold Race or the Strade Bianche, and with this new approach he will have to make significant adjustments to his efforts.
This year’s Giro d’Italia is much less challenging and demanding than previous editions, with much less mountainous terrain and fewer metres of positive climbing.
That’s not to say it’s easy, but it’s true that it will be less exhausting, leaving him fresh in July to challenge for victory in the Tour, as he has done in the last four editions, winning two (2020 and 2021) and finishing second in the other two (2022 and 2023).
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