'We don't try to be arrogant' - Tour de France leader Tadej Pogačar rejects suggestions that UAE Team Emirates-XRG overly keen to control breakaways

Tour de France leader Tadej Pogačar rejected suggestions that his UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad was behaving arrogantly after domestique Nils Politt was seen shouting at various riders after they tried to move across to the break early on stage 16.

Politt had already refuted the claims, suggesting to Sporza that he had only begun shouting because riders had broken the unwritten rule that there were no attacks while the yellow jersey stopped to answer a call of nature.

In his post-stage 17 press conference, the claims were also put to Pogačar, who asked who was being criticised, himself or the team. He was told it was the latter, and that both French national road coach Thomas Voeckler and TotalEnergies sports director Jean-René Bernadeau had been critical of his squad.

"I don't know, I mean arrogance is one thing, trying to win the Tour de France is another," Pogačar responded.

"We tried to calm things down, but just because we need to control every single kilometre of this race, we don't try to be arrogant, we just want to make our race as easy as possible."

He then suggested that the critics of the team should perhaps "stay quiet" on the subject of criticisms, before quickly qualifying that statement he also realised that that particular comment would "sound super-arrogant".

After Pogačar's strong defence of his teammates behaviour in the previous high mountain stages, the media's attention switched naturally enough to how the yellow jersey in particular will handle the tough two stages to come, kicking off with Thursday's monster mountain that finishes on the Col de la Loze.

After the Ventoux and the Hautacam, the 26.4-kilometre Alpine climb of the Loze is the third in the series of visits by the 2025 race to mountains where Pogačar has suffered in past Tours. However, as he also pointed out, on Thursday the Tour actually goes up a different side of Col de la Loze to the one where he definitively lost the race to Jonas Vingegaard in 2023.

"It's the queen stage of the Tour, I'm really looking forward to it. I hope I can have good legs and get revenge on my own legs from two years," Pogačar said. "It's a stage I really like and I'm sure it will be decisive for the whole Tour."

Pogačar recognised that the bad weather which Italian TV channels have been forecasting for the next few days in the Alps would not be great, but as he said, colder weather does tend to suit him.

This is no mere 'talking the talk', either. Back in 2021 in the first Alpine stage he began ripping the race apart in fearsomely freezing weather en route to Le Grand Bornand, then continued the process on the next, equally miserable day, on the uphill finish in the remote ski resort of Tignes.

Although Pogačar currently enjoys a comfortable 4:15 advantage over Vingegaard in the GC, in the last two mountain stages the Dane has been steadily gaining in strength, and Pogačar made it clear that he was aware that the Visma-Lease a Bike leader will almost certainly try to attack him again on the Col de la Loze.

Asked if he expects Danish weather or Slovenian weather in the Alps, he answered with a smile, 'Both, I think both. But we will see tomorrow." In any case, he said he had got over his slight cold of previous days, before adding with more good humour, "although now with the bad weather, maybe I'll get sick again".

Pogačar's upbeat mood was perhaps all the more logical given he had just through an unpleasantly wet stage on Wednesday with his overall advantage unscathed and without incidents, given the massive crash in the rain-soaked final kilometre. Even if it was an uneventful day for the UAE leader, it was witness to the Slovenian reaching another major landmark, as he racked up his 50th day in yellow, just two short of the total taken by five-time winner Jacques Anquetil in his entire career.

Whether Pogačar goes one day closer to the all-time French great and is still in yellow come Thursday evening and after over 5,450 metres of vertical climbing, remains to be seen, of course. But as he put it, rather than looking to defend second classifications like the polka dot jersey - which he also wears each evening as leader of the mountains ranking - "the only objective is yellow".

"I know the Loze and it's a beautiful climb, one of the hardest I've done in my life, although this time round we're going up the other side, so it's perhaps not so difficult.

"They [Visma] will try to go in the break, and they will give it everything on the Col de la Loze. But I'm ready."

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