A few days before the announcement of the <a href="https://www.archysport.com/2023/11/lille-lucky-winner-of-the-2025-tour-de-france/" title="Lille, lucky winner of the 2025 Tour de France“>2025 Grande Boucle route, scheduled for October 29, Christian Prudhomme, the boss of the Tour de France, spoke about his relationship with Tadej Pogacar, the world champion and double winner in 2024 of the Giro and the Grande Boucle, in an interview with La Dépêche.
He first tells how he experienced the decisive attack from the Slovenian 100km from the finish of the World Cup in Zurich. “I was in front of the TV except that we have a roof terrace and I had gone up for two seconds, thinking that the number of turns was enough for me to allow myself a little coffee above… I thought that One hundred kilometers from the finish, it would be the last quiet lap so with two minutes remaining I didn’t see it live. Knowingly, I went upstairs, telling myself I have time. I came back, I saw his green jersey, alone, I said to my daughter, did he attack? She told me yes, he attacked…” confides the big boss of the biggest race in the world, also amazed by “Pogi’s” performance.
During the interview, Christian Prudhomme is asked about the doubts surrounding the Slovenian’s performances. “If one day you learned that he was doped, would you be surprised, disappointed, disgusted? » he asked him. “Given the not-so-distant past of cycling, your question is not illegitimate,” says Christian Prudhomme. I don’t have an answer. I notice that it gives a pretty impressive performance in cycling competitions, in stages or one day. Controls exist, we fought with ASO to have independents, today this is the case with ITA. So… “
He also looks back on his relationship with the best rider in the world whom he discovered like everyone else in 2020, in the middle of the Covid pandemic when the Slovenian, barely 20 years old, came to shake up world cycling by winning his first Tour. “It arrived in the middle of a pandemic, I tested positive, we didn’t approach the runners. I shook his hand for the first time on the Champs in 2022. Then, I saw on social networks that he always repeated the word “croissant” in French. Croissant, croissant”, like a metronome… One day I arrived on the line and I brought him one, we took a photo, he was laughing, we joked…”
