Tadej Pogacar set to be rider to beat again as he looks to join elite Tour club

Tadej Pogacar will start the Tour de France as the overwhelming favourite to wear yellow in Paris once again.

This, it seems, is the age of Pogacar. Since that day, 21 months ago, when he wrestled yellow away from his fellow Slovenian Primoz Roglic on the penultimate day of the 2020 Tour, he has carried the air of the unbeatable.

Laid-back, affable, yet indefatigable, Pogacar has won seven of the eight stage races he has entered since, only settling for a podium finish in last year’s Tour of the Basque Country, and made securing his second consecutive Tour title 12 months ago look like a breeze.

He has also proven his one-day credentials with victories in Il Lombardia and Strade-Bianche, and top-five finishes at the Olympics, Milan-Sanremo and the Tour of Flanders.

Now he returns to France – via the Grand Depart in Copenhagen – looking to join the elite club of riders with three or more Tour crowns. Only eight men have done it before. Pogacar, aged just 23, aims to make it nine.

Joining company which includes five-time winners Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Jacques Anquetil, Miguel Indurain, plus Philippe Thys, Louison Bobet, Greg LeMond and Chris Froome, would put Pogacar in rarefied air.

Yet it would still feel like just the beginning for a rider who remains eligible for the young riders’ classification for another two years.

Such has been Pogacar’s dominance, it is easy to forget how new all this is, how small the sample size.

The feeling was that Roglic lost, as much as Pogacar won, the 2020 Tour. Roglic bossed the race for 11 days, only for it to fall apart on that desperate time trial on La Planche des Belles Filles.

Since then Pogacar has seemed on a different level, but Roglic has twice won the Vuelta a Espana,