NICE, France (Reuters) -Tadej Pogacar became the first rider to achieve the Giro d’Italia/Tour de France double since 1998 when he claimed his third Tour title on Sunday, cementing his domination by winning the final stage for his sixth stage success.
The Slovenian beat defending champion Jonas Vingegaard of Denmark and Belgian Remco Evenepoel, who were second and third overall and on the final stage, with a winning margin of six minutes and 17 seconds.
“I’m super happy, I cannot describe how happy I am after two hard years in the Tour de France, always some mistakes and this year, everything to perfection,” Pogacar said.
Pogacar won the 33.7-km individual time trial from Monaco to Nice in a time of 45 minutes and 24 seconds, destroying his rivals with a gap of one minute and three seconds over Vingegaard, winner of the last two Tours.
The winner could easily have played it safe having started the final day with a commanding lead over Vingegaard, but once again he showed no mercy and from the off he went for the stage win, his third in a row, to finish the Tour in style.
Eritrea’s Biniam Girmay won the green jersey for the points classification with Richard Carapaz of Ecuador taking the polka dot jersey for the mountains classification.
Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates won the team classification, while Evenepoel, who won the stage seven time trial, took the white jersey for the best young rider in his first Tour, finishing 9:18 behind the winner.
OUTSIDE PARIS
The Tour finished outside Paris for the first time in its 121-year history, due to the upcoming Olympic Games and it was the first time the Tour ended with a time trial since 1989 when Greg LeMond overtook Laurent Fignon on the final day.
This was never going to be as dramatic, however, given Pogacar’s emphatic lead and domination of the race.
Pogacar led since winning stage four, extending the gap to over three minutes after taking stages 14 and 15 before another two successive victories on stages 19 and 20 all but confirmed his overall win.
Vingegaard came into this year’s event having not raced for three months after suffering a collapsed lung and fractured rib at the Tour of the Basque country, and while he never looked like retaining his title, he did manage a stage win.
On stage 11, Vingegaard held off Pogacar to take the victory, and moved ahead of Evenepoel into second place after finishing runner-up to Pogacar on stage 14.
Evenepoel had hoped to repeat his earlier time trial stage win, but was soon overtaken by Vingegaard at the first intermediate checkpoint, but once Pogacar set off it was clear he had the stage victory in mind, to show his utter domination of the Tour.
No rider has completed the Giro/Tour double since the late Marco Pantani, and Pogacar became only the eighth rider to achieve the feat after also won six stages on his way to winning the Giro.
“I think this is the first Grand Tour where I was totally confident every day, even in the Giro I remember I had one bad day I won’t tell which one,” Pogacar said.
“This year’s Tour de France was just amazing and I was enjoying it since day one until today.”
(Reporting by Vincent Daheron, writing by Julien Pretot and Trevor Stynes; Editing by Susan Fenton, Christian Radnedge and Ed Osmond)
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