Tour de France<\/a> triumph \u2014 a race made even more challenging by illness in the final week \u2014 Poga\u010dar took time off at his home in Montecarlo. He stayed away from social media, went on some easy training rides, and even met Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift champion Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot on the road.<\/p>\n\u201cI managed to rest a little, I have a difficult Tour behind me and everyone can have a bad day,\u201d he explained when asked whether he felt better than in the closing days of the Tour. \u201cOf course, we can\u2019t expect that I will be glowing with happiness for all 21 stages. There were also difficult days. The Tour was really difficult, one of the hardest I\u2019ve ridden, which can be confirmed by everyone who fought for the overall classification.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, two weeks after the end of the Tour, I have rested, reset myself, so we are now moving forward normally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking ahead, Poga\u010dar confirmed that the 2026 Tour de France will remain central to his ambitions as he aims to match the all-time record of five overall wins. \u201cI will probably return to the Tour, in principle it is the biggest race and I don\u2019t think the team will leave me at home\u2026\u201d he said with a smile.<\/p>\n
While rival Jonas Vingegaard prepares for the Vuelta, Poga\u010dar will follow a different plan after a demanding spring and summer. His comeback race will be the Grand Prix Cycliste de Qu\u00e9bec, followed by Montr\u00e9al, before defending his rainbow jersey at the World Championships in Rwanda. One week later, he will head to southern France for the European Championships on 5 October.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that Montr\u00e9al suits me better but that doesn\u2019t mean that I won\u2019t try to win in Qu\u00e9bec as well,\u201d he said. \u201cThis year they changed the course a bit, it\u2019s even easier now, but the goal is harder, so we will try to win there as well. It\u2019s not necessarily me, we have a few other competitors who could suit this goal, especially Jhonathan Narvaez.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccording to the information we have, it\u2019ll be a European Championship for \u2018climbers\u2019 this year, so I will probably be there. It is similar to one of the spring races that Juan Ayuso won this year. But this European Championship probably means that I will not be able to go to any other Italian Classics except Lombardia.\u201d<\/p>\n
With just a handful of one-day races left before the season wraps up, Poga\u010dar intends to make the most of his form \u2014 and, in his own words, enjoy the moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The four-time Tour de France winner spoke to the media in Komenda during a special criterium staged by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-60722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60722","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=60722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}