Tour de France: tension builds as rivals Pogacar and Vingegaard brace for fresh duel
- Race gets under way in Florence next weekend with four riders in mix, and tour set up to go down to the wire
The Tour de France starts in Florence next Saturday billed as a four-way struggle spearheaded by bitter rivals Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard on a route designed to take the world’s greatest bike race down to the wire.
Team UAE’s Slovenian rider Pogacar goes into the 21-day race on red-hot form, while Visma’s Vingegaard, the two-time defending champion from Denmark, has not raced since suffering multiple fractures in a fall in March.
Vingegaard’s fall offers Pogacar a chance at revenge for the brutal manner in which the Dane crushed him on two Alpine stages late in the 2023 edition.
“It’s already my fifth time coming to the Tour and I’m really excited about it,” Pogacar, who won in 2020 and 2021, said
While the fiery Pogacar dislikes heat and high altitude, Vingegaard is the man on the back foot this year because of the punctured lung and broken ribs he sustained in that March accident.
Behind the pair are a host of pretenders awaiting the slightest slip on a treacherous route in a year where bike accidents have hogged the headlines.
