{"id":30038,"date":"2025-07-29T13:19:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T13:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/30038\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T13:19:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T13:19:09","slug":"jonas-vingegaard-wasnt-a-competitor-remco-evenepoel-definitely-not-so-who-can-rival-tadej-pogacar-at-tour-de-france-eddy-merckx-gives-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/30038\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonas Vingegaard ‘wasn’t a competitor’, Remco Evenepoel ‘definitely not’ – so who can rival Tadej Pogacar at Tour de France? Eddy Merckx gives view"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cycling legend Eddy Merckx believes that Tadej Pogacar<\/a> will one day win a record tally of Tour de France titles due to a lack of competition from the rest of the field.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Indeed, only Merckx, Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain have won more (five wins).<\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s victory saw Pogacar also become the first reigning world road champion to win the Tour since Greg LeMond in 1990.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pogacar\u2019s nearest rival, two-time Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard, trailed in the general classification by four minutes and 24 seconds, with Florian Lipowitz third.<\/p>\n

“There wasn’t any real tension during this Tour de France<\/a>,” Merckx told Wielerflits<\/a>. “Jonas Vingegaard wasn’t a competitor; he could only hang on in three weeks.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Indeed, Merckx added that he had faced fiercer competition when winning his 11 Grand Tours in the sixties and seventies than what Pogacar is coming up against today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“If there had been more competition, it would have been harder for him to achieve so many victories.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“But if you ask me if he’ll win more than five Tour de France [titles], I can only answer that with: absolutely!”<\/p>\n

\"picture\"<\/p>\n

Marshal shoulder bumps Pogacar at finish as Arensman stuns Tour favourites<\/p>\n

Video credit: TNT Sports<\/p>\n

Merckx added his belief that no rider will be able to compete with the Slovenian in the coming years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said: “Remco Evenepoel? No, definitely not. Remco is more of a time trialist.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“He’s not strong enough uphill to compete with Pogacar for the Tour de France victory.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“[Juan Ayuso] is not strong enough in three weeks.”<\/p>\n

On Mathieu van der Poel he said: “Fantastic! He rode an incredible Tour, what an athlete. His dedication is unparalleled, and he often does beautiful and unexpected things.<\/p>\n

“It’s a shame Mathieu isn’t a Tour rider anymore, because he’s the only one who could really challenge Pogacar.”<\/p>\n

Stream the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift live on TNT Sports and discovery+<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cycling legend Eddy Merckx believes that Tadej Pogacar will one day win a record tally of Tour de…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,28545,85,6494,2845],"class_list":["post-30038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-eddy-merckx","tag-sports","tag-tadej-pogacar","tag-tour-de-france"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30038","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=30038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}