{"id":249295,"date":"2025-10-29T19:21:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T19:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/249295\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T19:21:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T19:21:06","slug":"egan-bernal-admits-frustration-at-tadej-pogacars-dominance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/249295\/","title":{"rendered":"Egan Bernal admits frustration at Tadej Pogacar\u2019s dominance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#13;<br \/>\nA long road back for BernalBernal\u2019s words carry extra weight given how far he has had to fight his way back. His career was nearly ended by a horrific training crash in early 2022 that left him with multiple fractures and a punctured lung. Now 28, the Colombian enjoyed his strongest campaign in years in 2025 \u2014 winning both Colombian national titles, finishing seventh at the Giro d\u2019Italia and taking a stage at the <a href=\"https:\/\/cyclinguptodate.com\/vuelta-a-espana\" title=\"Vuelta a Espana\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Vuelta a Espana<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis year, I felt like I started to be myself again; I felt stronger,\u201d he said. \u201cI feel different. I went to the Giro, finished seventh, and I went to the Vuelta aiming for the podium. It didn\u2019t happen, but I still believe that one day I can win again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Battling pain long before the crash<\/p>\n<p>Bernal also revealed that his struggles began even before his near-fatal accident. He had been riding through severe back pain caused by a herniated disc as early as 2020 \u2014 a problem he says may have already jeopardised his career.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s hard to say, I was dealing with back pain,\u201d Bernal explained. \u201cI had a herniated disc, and I didn\u2019t know whether I\u2019d need surgery or not. We realised it was very serious \u2014 it was pinching a nerve, and that was causing the pain. Even so, in 2021 I went to the Giro with that pain and won it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCool to compete against him\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bernal and Pogacar have shared the Tour de France peloton before, but they\u2019ve never truly gone head-to-head for the overall. In Pogacar\u2019s first Tour, Bernal was forced to abandon with back pain while defending his 2019 title, and by the time the Slovenian began his era of dominance, Bernal\u2019s career had already been derailed by injury.<\/p>\n<p>For a rider who once stood where Pogacar now reigns, Bernal\u2019s comments are more than admiration \u2014 they\u2019re the voice of a champion who knows exactly what it takes to reach the top, and just how superhuman it looks when someone else makes it seem effortless.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; A long road back for BernalBernal\u2019s words carry extra weight given how far he has had to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-249295","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}