For newly retired Geraint Thomas, Tadej Pogacar would not have won the Tour de France with the bike with which the Briton won the Grande Boucle in 2018.
The ogre Tadej Pogacar has still left only crumbs. Like last year, the 27-year-old Slovenian overcame the competition in 2025, notably with a fourth Tour de France gleaned. The leader of the UAE Emirates also raised his arms on Three Monuments (Tour of Flanders, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Tour of Lombardy), or the road race of the world and European championships as well as on the Critérium du Dauphiné. In total, “Pogi” has scored 20 victories this season.
If the exceptional performances of the Slovenian rider sometimes raise doubts and generate annoyance among his competitors, they are made possible thanks to developments in equipment, particularly bicycles. These have changed enormously in recent years, so much so that Geraint Thomas, recently retired, thinks that Pogacar would not win the Tour de France with machines from the late 2010s.
“I don’t think he would win the Tour against Jonas (Vingegaard) with my bike”thus released the Briton in his podcast entitled Watts Occuring, referring to the bike of his coronation on the Grande Boucle in 2018.
“Over 21 stages, it would be too hard to hold, Pogacar would not win”
“There is a huge difference between the bikes of today and those on which we spent most of our careers. We have now reached a point where we are competing in mountain stages on aero bikes”explained Luke Rowe.
And to add: “ Maybe if you put him at the bottom of the climb on the old bike, man to man, he (Pogacar) could still win. But the accumulation of fatigue on each stage… On stage 1, generally a flat stage, with an old bike, it would have to do 15/20 watts on average more to be at the same pace. Over 21 stages, it would be too hard to hold on, he wouldn’t win. »
