Tadej Pogacar: "Attacking was a form of defence"

June 14 ^th 2025 - 17:02

"I didn’t necessarily need to take loads of time today. Attacking was a form of defence and then I just tried to pace myself to the top and ease up in the last kilometres. I’m super happy with how we rode today. They attacked us, we responded. And we’ll have two more climbers in the Tour de France.

Today we wanted to take control on the climbs but Visma went for many attacks. They attacked at the top of La Croix de Fer and then I think they wanted to drop me on the downhill. It was a bit dangerous in the first kilometres, I didn’t like that but it’s cycling. When Pavel [Sivakov] came back, he controlled.

On the final climb, he told me he couldn’t pull much longer so we prepared for my attack and I committed because I didn’t want to be attacked left and right. I felt really strong but I also didn’t want to go too deep on a super hot and long climb.

So far, so good. But let’s arrive tomorrow."