3 minute read

Tadej Pogacar's amazing Tour de France win has left Australia's finest road cyclist Cadel Evans wondering if the Slovenian might be the best of all-time.

Australia's all-time cycling greats have been left stupefied by the amazing dominance of Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar, with Cadel Evans hailing him as perhaps the greatest bike rider of all-time.

Aussie sprint star Robbie McEwen also fancies that Slovenian three-time champion Pogacar could even seek to break Mark Cavendish's newly-minted Tour record of 35 stage victories.

Such was his voracious appetite for stage-winning at this Tour that Pogacar, still only 25, took his sixth victory over the three weeks in Sunday's final stage, wrapping up his overall triumph by winning the concluding time trial in Nice by over one minute. 

It was his 17th Tour stage win and followed on from the six stages he won when racing away with the Giro d'Italia title in equally brilliant fashion in May.

With his overall victory on Sunday by a huge six minutes 17 seconds from two-time champion Jonas Vingegaard, Pogacar becomes the first rider since Italian Marco Pantani in 1998 to do the Giro-Tour double in the same year.

Australia's only Tour champion Evans told ITV Sport: "I was sure coming in before the Tour that he wasn't going to be able to do the Giro-Tour double. I was sure that one day he'd crack and have a bad day and lose it all to Vingegaard. 

"But he just proved day after day, it looks as if he was getting stronger and he wasn't even getting fatigued at the end, looking at his face in the time trial today.

"He's just really not one of the greats - but maybe the greatest."

That accolade has for so long been reserved for Eddy Merckx, the all-conquering Belgian "Cannibal" who devoured opponents on the road as keenly as he gobbled up new records.

Evans, the 2011 Tour champion, watched Pogacar win the 15th stage on the Plateau de Beille, where he had also featured 13 years earlier, and admitted his astonishment.

"Like everyone, I'm watching Pog and I'm just amazed. 

"We knew Pog was the greatest talent riding a bike on the planet at the moment, but then seeing days like that, when I'm thinking he might pay for his efforts, then he attacks like that, pulls it off and just takes more and more time.

"I look at the times and Pog rode up the climb way faster than anyone has ever ridden it. Vingegaard set a new record as well but it's just not good enough against Pogacar."

Eurosport pundit McEwen, the three-time points classification winner at the Tour and 12-time stage victor, couldn't resist rehashing his old joke about "GroundPog Day" and "Ta-deja vu" as he pondered Pogacar's domination.

"Pogacar, there's a reason why he's going for these stage victories. I think he's got an eye on that stage win record of Mark Cavendish," said McEwen.

Cavendish, who eclipsed Merckx's record of 34 wins on the Tour's fifth stage into Saint-Vulbas, revealed after the time trial on Sunday that he had "likely" raced for the last time.

After setting the new mark, 'Cav' had joked with Pogacar about his landmark: 'Don't beat it!'

But nothing seems out of reach for the Slovenian. 

"Seeing Mark Cavendish winning all these stages, I thought he was from another planet and the record was not reachable," Pogacar noted earlier in the Tour. 

"But if you chase your dreams, you can catch them…"