{"id":17125,"date":"2025-07-23T04:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T04:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/17125\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T04:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T04:50:09","slug":"tour-de-france-2025-tadej-pogacar-insists-he-is-definitely-not-superman-after-breaking-mont-ventoux-record-on-stage-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/17125\/","title":{"rendered":"Tour de France 2025: Tadej Pogacar insists he is ‘definitely not Superman’ after breaking Mont Ventoux record on Stage 16"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tadej Pogacar (UAE Emirates-XRG) was quick to insist he is “definitely not Superman” after a record-breaking climb of Mont Ventoux.<\/p>\n

Pogacar, never more than two bike lengths away from rival Jonas Vingegaard<\/a> (Visma\u2013Lease a Bike) during most of the ascent, came home in fifth with his yellow jersey status still firmly intact.<\/p>\n

But a more prestigious prize was won by the Slovenian, who beat the previous fastest ascent of Ventoux by 50 seconds. <\/p>\n

Pogacar reached the summit in an unofficial time of 55:41, which would shatter Iban Mayo’s 55:51 from the 2004 Criterium du Dauphine.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think we could have ridden much faster,” said Pogacar in the aftermath.<\/p>\n

“Jonas and his team did very good pacing. For today, this was the limit for how fast we could ride.<\/p>\n

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

‘Superglue!’ – Vingegaard attacks three times, Pogacar responds in thrilling Mont Ventoux battle<\/p>\n

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

“We rode hard to the bottom. First there was a fight for position, then more pacing, then he had Tiesj [Benoot, Visma] and Victor [Campenaerts, Visma] waiting for him, so their pacing was really executed perfectly.<\/p>\n

“It all went pretty fast, though maybe if we’d cut a few corners, we’d have taken a couple more seconds and it would have been quicker.”<\/p>\n

There was precious little between Pogcar and Vingegaard in the end, with neither able to shake the other from the back of their wheel.<\/p>\n

But with five stages to come<\/a> and the reigning general classification champion holding a 4’15” advantage over the Dane, it looks likely a fourth crown is heading his way.<\/p>\n

Despite his dominance throughout this year’s Tour, Pogacar knows his limits and said it would have taken something beyond superhuman to catch the leaders.<\/p>\n

“I’m definitely not Superman. I was born in Ljubljana, not wherever Superman was born, I forget. But today was an epic climb to do all the same,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I was coming up quite fast, I could see the winners ahead in the last 800 metres, but not even Superman could have caught them there.<\/p>\n

“In the end, I was actually quite close to the breakaway. Chapeau to [stage winner Valentin] Paret-Peintre, he deserved the victory. It was a super-nice win.<\/p>\n

“Sometimes I was at my limit. But the important thing was not to go too deep and lose time.<\/p>\n

“I kept a little bit in reserve, and I simply tried to stay with Jonas. The big goal was to defend the yellow today and nothing else.”<\/p>\n

Stream the Tour de France and Tour de France Femmes live on TNT Sports and discovery+<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tadej Pogacar (UAE Emirates-XRG) was quick to insist he is “definitely not Superman” after a record-breaking climb of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,8782,6549,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-17125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-tadej-pogacar","tag-tour-de-france","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}