Coy Pogacar sees cluster of rivals, targets record fifth Tour triumph

Tadej Pogacar begins his quest for history on Saturday as he bids to win a record fifth Tour de France.

As has been the case in the previous five years, his main competition will come from Jonas Vingegaard, who beat the Slovenian in 2022 and 2023 but was second to the world champion in 2021, 2024 and last year.

Yet the Tour will not be just about those two this year, as France dreams of ending its 41-year wait for a home winner at the Grande Boucle.

Teenage prodigy Paul Seixas has dazzled throughout this year, and although no one expects him to actually win the Tour this year — this will be his first Grand Tour — he is surely a champion in the making.

But over 21 stages — starting with a team time-trial in Barcelona — and 3,200 kilometres that will cross the Pyrenees into southwestern France before heading diagonally to the Vosges mountains in the northeast before dropping down to the Alps in the southeast and then finishing in the capital, Paris.

It is hard to see past Pogacar, such has been his dominance in cycling in the last three seasons.

He has had seven races this season, winning six of them and finishing second in the other one.

He won his two stage races, wracking up 13 victories in 16 race days in 2026, never finishing below 12th in any stage.

“If he’s able to stay on his bike... it looks as if he’s got this one in the bag,” former four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome told AFP.

Few would disagree.

Pogacar insisted there are several rivals who could beat him, but victories over the 27-year-old UAE Team Emirates leader have become a rarity.

Vingegaard, 29, described Pogacar as “probably the best rider who has ever been in a bunch”.

And the Dane is in the form of his life, bristling with confidence after completing the Grand Tour clean sweep in May -- a feat which Pogacar has not yet managed.

“I think I’m ready for this race and I’m really looking forward to it,” said Vingegaard.

“It’s been an amazing year for me so far, so I’m looking forward to hopefully continuing.”

Podium fight: Others, say they are as good as resigned to battling it out for third place behind the two giants of Grand Tours.

Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe team-mates Remco Evenepoel, the Olympic champion, and Florian Lipowitz have each finished third in the last two years.

They are joint team leaders, but also rivals for that final podium spot.

Evenepoel insisted that there would be no in-fighting between the pair.

“Of course, we want to be on the podium, but whether it’s him or myself, I think we need to do it in a good way without having this negative energy,” he said.

“We both really want to do what we did already in the past, which is to be on the podium behind Tadej and Jonas.”

To do so, they are going to have to finish ahead of Seixas, who has comprehensively beaten both this season.

Lipowitz was a distant second to Seixas at the Tour of the Basque Country in April, while Evenepoel finished well behind Pogacar and the Frenchman in third at the one-day Liege-Bastogne-Liege classic that same month.

Some think that it is too soon for Seixas to be tackling the Tour as Decathlon CMA CGM team leader.

Not the Frenchman.

“The priority remains the general classification, to see how that goes,” said the 19-year-old.

“Which position, I don’t know yet, but I wouldn’t take any risks for anything other than the overall standings.”

The third favourite for the Tour is Isaac Del Toro.

The Mexican has won the UAE Tour, Tirreno-Adriatico and the Tour Auvergne-Rhone-Alps this year, but he is Pogacar’s team-mate and will be working for the Slovenian.

If he was in any other team, Del Toro would be one of Pogacar’s main rivals.

“It’s a great dream that I have had since I was young,” Del Toro, 22, said about riding in his first Tour.

“The truth is that I feel very privileged, very happy.”

Agence France-Presse