Tadej Pogačar's words on the Col de la Loze climb in the 2023 Tour de France - "I'm gone, I'm dead" - have echoed through cycling as one of the toughest moments of the Slovenian's career to date, and are well-known as the moment when Pogačar definitively lost cycling's biggest bike race that year.
Radioed through to his team car on the interminable Alpine descent, an exhausted Pogačar finally lost seven minutes to the race favourites and all hope of a third Tour de France victory in four years.
However, in a lengthy interview with RIDE magazine, UAE Team Emirates-XRG CEO Mauro Gianetti has now defined that brutal defeat as the "best day of his career."
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Pogačar subsequently went on to win a further two Tours in 2024 and 2025 as well as becoming the greatest racer of his generation, and while the Slovenian is notoriously averse to comparisons, some claim he is now fast approaching the level of domination and success of all-time great Eddy Merckx.
Currently with four Tours in his palmares, as well as a Giro d'Italia, Gianetti also said in the interview that Pogačar could have won the 2019 Vuelta, his first ever Grand Tour, had he not been chased down by Movistar, working for second placed Alejandro Valverde on the final day in the mountains.
However, perhaps the most striking moment in the interview came when Gianett argued that the point when Pogačar was on his knees in the Tour de France in 2023 on the Col de la Loze was the high point of his career to date.
"A champion like him, completely exhausted, reaching the finish line seven minutes behind the leader, having lost everything… 90% of the other riders would have quit that day and given up due to illness. They would have abandoned the Tour," Gianetti said.
"He could have quit. He could have cried. He could have shown that he couldn't do it anymore. But that didn't occur to him.”Instead, as Gianetti pointed out to RIDE, Pogacar opted to battle on.
"He accepted his defeat and wanted to fight for some redemption in that Tour. He had the courage to persevere and not take the easy way out. Three days later, he won the stage in the Vosges and secured second place in the general classification. Chapeau!"
Recalling their first meeting in 2018 after Pogačar had won the Tour de l'Avenir, Gianetti told RIDE that the young Slovenian, still an amateur, was "a bit overweight." But apart from already showing talent on the climbs, Gianetti said that Pogačar's personality and attitude also reminded him of Swiss tennis great Roger Federer, with whom the former Amstel Gold and Liège-Bastogne-Liege winner had crossed paths at the Sydney Olympics, when Federer was only 18 and ranked no.34 in the world.
"When I spoke to him [Federer], you could sense in everything that he had something special. I was already convinced then that he could become No. 1 in the world. I felt the same way about Tadej," Gianetti said.
While Gianetti pointed to the 2019 Vuelta a España, where Pogačar took third overall and three stages, as the pinnacle of his debut year as a pro, he also told RIDE that Pogačar losing the Tour de France twice to Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) in 2022 and 2023 had subsequently made the Slovenian stronger. As he put it, "He's repeating the rewards now."
Rather than the Col de la Loze being a wake-up call, though, Gianetti said that the stinging defeat Pogačar had suffered to arch-rival Vingegaard in the very hilly time trial to Combloux the day before had been the crunch moment where the team recognised they could not afford to sleep on their laurels for any longer.
“Not just for Tadej, but also for the team...It was an eye-opener. We realized we needed to invest more in our time trial bike, as it wasn't light enough for the climbs at the time. We also improved Tadej's position on the time trial bike. Just like his helmet, the clothing…"
" We scrutinized everything to see where we could gain a few seconds and close the gap to Visma-Lease a Bike."
Gianetti pointed out that even a rider like Pogačar has limits, though, and if he wanted to return to the Giro d'Italia some time in the future to try for a second victory, he would not take part in so many Classics as in 2025 or as is planned for 2026.
Next season Pogačar will start racing in Strade Bianche, like in 2024, but will then head to all four Monuments, prior to making his debut at the Tour de Romandie and the Tour de Suisse.
" Choices have to be made. We have to be careful that he only has a maximum of about 60 racing days per year. When you consider his aggressive racing style, it takes a tremendous amount of energy," Gianetti explained.
"If you look at his spring season [of 2025] before he started preparing for the Tour, he had 14 days of racing. That was extremely well-considered. We want a program where he can truly focus on the big races."
