We start today with the latest musings from the oldest Grand Tour winner in history, Chris Horner.<\/p>\n
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Speaking on his own YouTube channel, which is the style of the time, the 2013 Vuelta a\u00a0Espa\u00f1a\u00a0champion reflected on the news that Tadej Poga\u010dar was battling a knee injury during the second half of this year’s Tour de France that apparently left the Slovenian close to abandoning the race<\/a> whilst in the maillot jaune and caused him to ride more defensively in the latter stages of the race.<\/p>\n “You\u2019ve got thousands upon thousands of pedal strokes, and something\u2019s going to give.” Horner said.<\/p>\n “This is the more educated, adult experience now that Poga\u010dar is coming into.\u00a0If you can\u2019t get rid of\u00a0Jonas Vingegaard\u00a0straight away, you don\u2019t want to lose time to him either. So he raced wisely. He backed off the throttle.”<\/p>\n “It wasn\u2019t a lack of motivation. What we were watching was a rider in pain, protecting his GC.”<\/p>\n So far, so normal. But as an ex-pro, Horner probably realised the key to get people to engage with his content was to share his own lived experience of racing through pain, although he maybe went a degree too far.<\/p>\n “Whenever your body goes into trauma, it always gains weight,\u201d he explained. \u201cI\u2019ve been in hospital after crashes where I didn\u2019t eat for a week and came out seven or eight pounds heavier.\u201d<\/p>\n “Instead of losing weight as the race goes on, like you normally would, you\u2019re gaining it.\u00a0Every little bit counts when you\u2019re climbing\u00a0Ventoux\u00a0or the\u00a0Loze.”<\/p>\n “[At the 2009 Tour of California]\u00a0I was taking Tramadol\u00a0aggressively to get through every stage,\u201d he said. “In those days it was legal and I was using it heavily.”<\/p>\n “But it was clear \u2014 I was gaining weight. I could see it day after day. I told my teammates: don\u2019t wait for me on Mount Palomar. My form had just dropped away.\u201d<\/p>\n As a reminder, tramadol is a strong painkiller that was for many years banned by cycling races for a suspected link between its use and crashes\u00a0in the peloton. Former Endura Racing and Team Sky rider Jonathan Tiernan-Locke claimed that<\/a>\u00a0the drug was freely offered by British Cycling in and around the 2012 World Championships.<\/p>\n However, it took several years until it was added to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned list due to a lack of clear evidence of performance enhancement. This meant Nairo Quintana’s UCI-imposed disqualification from the Tour de France in 2022 did not result in an additional doping ban from WADA. WADA added tramadol to its banned substance list later that year.<\/p>\n![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/screenshot-2025-10-17-092354.png\" "\\"Chris")
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![\"Tadej](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/zw-104717.jpg\" "\\"Tadej")
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