{"id":657177,"date":"2026-06-25T08:28:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T08:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/657177\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T08:28:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T08:28:18","slug":"some-tour-de-france-riders-are-losing-heart-over-pogacar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/657177\/","title":{"rendered":"Some tour de France riders are losing heart over Poga\u010dar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can Tadej Pogacar<\/a> be beaten in the upcoming Tour de France<\/a>? The defending champion won the Tour de Suisse in dominant fashion and seems very hard to beat in July. Dutch riders Koen Bouwman<\/a> and Sam Oomen<\/a> aren\u2019t very optimistic, and they try to explain what it\u2019s like to ride in the peloton with such a voracious competitor. Spoiler: It\u2019s not much fun.Oomen raced at the Tour of Switzerland<\/a>, where he had hoped to achieve a good result. \u201cI trained hard, trained in the heat, thinking I was in pretty good shape at the start of the race,\u201d he explains on the Dutch language podcast, In het Peloton<\/a>. \u201cIn the GP Gippingen, the prelude to the Tour de Suisse, I was right in the thick of the action. But in the Tour de Suisse, I stepped into a boxing ring and took a beating.\u201dPogacar’s Swiss dominance sent a messageAnd that\u2019s mainly thanks to Pogacar. The Slovenian rider from UAE Team Emirates-XRG won three of the five stages<\/a> and took the overall title with a 6.30-minute lead over the runner-up\u2014the largest margin since the war. \u201cThere\u2019s one team\u2014and especially one rider\u2014who stands so far above the rest that it\u2019s hard to even wrap your head around just how fast he\u2019s actually riding, even though you\u2019re giving it your all yourself. I don\u2019t know if \u2018disillusionment\u2019 is the right word, but that\u2019s the first word that comes to mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Right from day one, Pogacar showed he meant business. The world champion (who had been out of competition for a month) went on the offensive as early as the opening stage. With just over seventy kilometers to go, he accelerated and gained minutes on his first pursuers. The tone was set. \u201cOn day one, I heard it a lot\u2014many riders were saying to each other, \u2018I\u2019ve never seen anything like this before,\u2019\u201d said Oomen.<\/p>\n

Read more below the photo!<\/p>\n

\"tadej-pogacar\"\/Bouwman: ‘The difference between amateurs and me is the same as the difference between Pogacar and me’<\/p>\n

Bouwman tries to explain the difference between himself and Pogacar using a comparison. \u201cEvery regional club has a summer evening race. We have one here in Doetinchem, too, and there I race against amateurs who are landscapers\u2014people who lay tiles and haul trees from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. By then, I\u2019ve usually already been riding for three or four hours, but you can play around with that a bit. They ride incredibly fast, but if you want to, you can outride them.\u201d<\/p>\n

“I really think the difference between the amateurs and me is the same as the difference between Pogacar and me,” Bouwman sighs. “And I didn’t lay tiles from seven to five\u2014I’m just a pro, too, and I give it my all. The difference is just so unbelievable. You can’t even describe it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Can Tadej Pogacar be beaten in the upcoming Tour de France? The defending champion won the Tour de…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,130585,220602,101,8782,135345,218343,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-657177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-koen-bouwman","tag-sam-oomen","tag-sports","tag-tadej-pogacar","tag-tour-de-france-2026","tag-tour-of-switzerland","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657177","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=657177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}