Tadej Pogačar is putting the finishing touches to his Tour de France preparation at altitude at Isola 2000, where he has been joined by the bulk of the UAE Team Emirates squad that will support him on the race.
The Slovenian spent a week at home in Monaco after winning the Giro d’Italia before travelling to Isola 2000 on June 4. He will remain there until Monday, as per the plan outlined by his team at the start of the season.
No rider has won the Giro-Tour double since the late Marco Pantani in 1998, and the few riders to attempt the feat since fell short in July after digging too deep into their reservoirs at the corsa rosa. UAE Team Emirates sports manager Matxin Joxean Fernandez, however, insisted that Pogačar emerged relatively fresh from a Giro that he dominated from start to finish.
“What I can say is that he didn’t come out of the Giro tired of legs or tired of mind,” Matxin told BiciPro, though he noted that a week without formal training was still an essential element of his post-Giro plan.
While Pogačar was training at Isola 2000, other members of his Tour guard were racing elsewhere. Juan Ayuso was in action at the Critérium du Dauphiné before being forced out by a crash, while Adam Yates and João Almeida placed first and second at the Tour de Suisse.
They travelled onwards to the UAE camp, with Nils Politt – in action this week at the German championships – the only member of their Tour selection who will miss the remainder of their stay at altitude.
“When all the riders were there, we had the pre-Tour meeting,” said Matxin, who confirmed that none of the riders who accompanied Pogačar at the Giro would be in action in July.
As per the plan outlined by Matxin to Cyclingnews during the Giro, Pogačar will thus be supported by Yates, Almeida, Ayuso, Politt, Marc Soler, Tim Wellens and Pavel Sivakov at the Tour.
Isola 2000 is a fitting spot for a training camp ahead of this year’s Tour, given that the ski station features as the summit finish on stage 19. Indeed, with the finish of this year’s Tour shifted from Paris to Nice due to the Olympic Games, the training camp allowed Pogačar to reconnoitre the final four stages of the race. Ineos and Soudal-QuickStep have also been based at Isola 2000 ahead of the Tour.
“We saw the last four stages, and we were almost always able just to leave by bike from the hotel to do that,” Matxin said. “In some cases, we did the whole stage, whereas for others we only looked at the finale because we didn’t want to be going back and forth too much in the cars.”
As well as working in the mountains, Pogačar’s training camp has incorporated work against the watch. His remarkable time trial displays at the Giro highlighted his progress in the discipline this winter, but the final stage of the 2024 Tour offers another kind of test, with the climbs of La Turbie and the Col d’Èze featuring in the 35km run from Monaco to Nice.
“We’ve tested some new things on the bikes, mainly with regard to lightening them, and we did time trial testing,” Matxin said. “Small things, but they make the difference. The bikes are the same as at the Giro, but we’ve tried to lighten them a bit.”
After two nights back in Monaco, Pogačar will travel to Florence on Wednesday ahead of the Grand Départ.
“I see him motivated, I see him calm, I see him happy. I can't say anything negative, because there is nothing negative,” Matxin said. “And even though we have a team of rockstars, they obviously all believe in Tadej as the leader of this team for the Tour.”
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