SESTRIERE – Tadej Pogacar's last high-altitude ride before the Tour de France. A light fog envelops the Colle, while the big cities are already gasping for air from the summer heat, which arrived a few weeks late. It's a few minutes past 9:00 a.m. and, when we enter theHotel Lago Losetta, we find the UAE Team Emirates sitting at the table for breakfast.
We laugh and joke and the king of Great Boucle 2020 and 2021 has a relaxed face as he talks to team manager Joxean Fernandez, for all “Matxin”, before the light training that awaits him at the end of a busy training period. At his side are some of the faithful teammates who will escort him to the Tour de France, from the Polish Rafal Majka to the Spanish Marc Soler, passing through the latest arrivals in the team in 2023: Adam Yates, coming off a good Dauphiné, and Austrian champion Felix Grosschartner.
A few words with Matxin
The riders head to their room to get ready for training, while Matxin chats with us and answers the hottest question of the moment Among cycling enthusiasts and beyond: how is Pogacar doing?
"Good," he replies, "his condition is improving. We've done a retreat in Sierra Nevada, then we did a reconnaissance of the stages of the third week of the Tour and, in order not to go to Sierra again, also for logistical reasons, we came here. Now he will do the two races of the national championship and then he leaves for the Tour de France».
Lucky Sestriere
In choosing Sestriere who knows, maybe the cabal had its say too, as the owner of the facility and director of the Sestriere Sport Center jokes, Gianfranco Martin.
"It's the third time they've come here to us," he says with a smile. the former Italian skier, winner of the silver medal in the combined event at Albertville 1992 – and the last two times, in 2020 and 2021, I'd say it went well. Last night, together with the mayor of Sestriere, Giovanni Poncet, we presented him with the pennant and the book celebrating the municipality's 90th anniversary: Let's hope Sestriere brings good luck this time too».
Izoard for four
The team mechanic Gabriele Campello shows us today's training route, which includes the Montgenèvre and then the Izoard. from the Guillestre side, then returning to Sestriere from Briançon for an outing that will last more than five hours. At 10,38 the garage door opens and Soler, Grosschartner, Majka and a yawing Yates appear.Tadej isn't here, but there's no need to worry: today is just a bit of a rest before the two hard stages of the Slovenian championships, which will also serve as tests for the Tour. A quick pre-departure chat, time to set the track on the cycle computer and then the UAE group disappears into the fog that is now clearing.
Here is Tadej
At 11:08, the garage door of the Lago Losetta hotel opens again and this time an unmistakable tuft of hair appears. Compared to his companions, Tadej goes straight ahead, lifts the zip of his windbreaker and dives towards CesanaHis menu today is decidedly more bland after a week and a half up and down the mountains. This time no Izoard, but a trip towards Oulx and Val di Susa to test the legHis face, once he puts on his helmet and glasses, is no longer the smiling one he had at breakfast, but one concentrated and focused on the impending French campaign. The goal is fixed in the mind and has only one color: yellow..
The team is made
The game is now over for the Tour, Matxin confirmed it to us an hour earlier, he didn't go out on a limb about the names, although he smiled when asked about them baby phenomenon Ayuso.
«The riders – he explained – already know who is in the team and who is the reserve and This evening we are having the last operational meeting with the Tour group, for which the sporting directors Andrej Hauptman, Marco Marcato will also arrive and Simone Pedrazzini will also be there. Let's do it a quiet briefing before dinner and tomorrow Tadej goes straight to Slovenia».
Remove the guardian
The detail that immediately catches the eye when admiring pedaling the winner of four Monuments (the last one last spring, Flanders) is that his left wrist is no longer covered by the brace that has accompanied him in recent weeks, especially on time trial bike rides. A further sign that the Slovenian ace is getting his act together in view of the challenge with Jonas Vingegaard.
A light overpass over the Susa Valley is enough to see that the pedal stroke is that of someone who promises a show at the Tour and has every intention of regaining the throne. The fall of the Liège-Bastogne-Liège it now seems like a distant memory, down there on the horizon, behind the Alps, you can almost make out the Champs-Elysées.
