Tadej Pogacar put in a masterful ride at the 2024 World Championships in Zurich to take for the first time in his career the World Championships. He will be putting on the rainbow jersey after an attack over 100 kilometers away from the finish and among those that were impressed is Lance Armstrong.
The man who won and then lost 7 Tour de France spares no praise for the Slovenian, whom he already considers one of the best of all time. It is clear to him that his physical superiority is so high compared to the rest that he has a confidence out of the ordinary in professional sport:
“Tadej Pogacar is a generational talent, he’s in the pantheon of all-time greats. Obviously physically the guy is so superior and the confidence level so high, he looks like he’s racing a junior race. In my day I wouldn’t attack at a hundred kilometers even in the under-23’s, it’s a beastly confidence.”
Johan Bruyneel, co-host of ‘The Move’, for his part highlighted the comments of his great rivals after his exhibition and described what he had achieved as ‘unique’: “In the interviews of the other two favorites, Remco Evenepoel and Mathieu van der Poel, both agreed that they could not believe what had happened; Evenepoel said it was ‘suicidal’, they could not believe what they had seen. I think Pogacar’s achievement is the most deserved World Championships in the history of modern cycling, it’s so unique to see a rider win such different races.
He makes it clear that he is way ahead of Jonas Vingegaard as a complete cyclist and that he only has Paris-Roubaix as a real challenge in his career:
“Many put Pogacar and Vingegaard on the same level, but that’s not true, they are not on the same level, Vingegaard can’t do what Pogacar has done in the World Championships in a one-day race, he has already beaten the big specialists in the Tour of Flanders, Van Aert and Van der Poel, on the cobbles. He only has one thing left which is Paris-Roubaix and I think he can win that too.”
Leave a Reply