Riding the Tour de France in 40C is hard enough without having to race against Tadej Pogacar and UAE Team Emirates XRG every day. As the peloton takes a breather, lounges in the shade and rehydrates on the Tour’s first rest day, most team managers are pondering what genuine opportunities they may still have, in the face of Pogacar’s domination, to try to achieve success.
“Is Pogacar killing cycling?” asked L’Équipe after he and his team were criticised for chasing down breakaways, even if they posed little or no threat to the overall standings. On Sunday’s stage to Ussel, UAE Team Emirates asked for help from other teams in pursuing the day’s escapers, one of whom was Tom Pidcock.
Pidcock’s former team, Netcompany Ineos, promptly obliged, although many found it hard to understand their motivation. “We decided to contribute to the chase because we believed in Pippo Ganna,” the team’s sports director, Daryl Impey, said.
Pogacar and his team would deny it, but there is no doubt that the four-time champion is cycling’s new “patron”, echoing other serial Tour winners, such as Eddy Merckx and Lance Armstrong, who effectively controlled the outcome of most stages in the Tour, even the ones they were not bothered about winning.
Pogacar is untouchable in the mountains and his detractors would say he has become untouchable in other ways, too. Few on this Tour have displayed much scepticism towards the Slovenian, even after he shattered the record climbing time on the Col du Tourmalet. There is not the same open cynicism in France that was on show during the Armstrong era, or even towards Chris Froome, who won four Tours while with Team Sky.
But there is nonetheless growing incredulity at the roadside towards Pogacar’s supremacy. Pogacar and his team have won three stages and it seems inevitable they will win more. With six mountain stages to come, including a mountain time trial, he may be out of sight by the time the Tour turns towards Paris.
He is also in control elsewhere in the race. Already it feels as if he has chosen his successor and, on the basis of what we have seen, it is more probable to be his Mexican teammate Isaac del Toro than the highly sought-after French prodigy Paul Seixas, who is subject to contract offers from most leading teams. While Seixas, a Tour debutant, is still an apprentice, Del Toro has finished on the podium of the Giro d’Italia and is challenging second-placed Jonas Vingegaard.
The UAE team are also one of Seixas’s suitors. Nino Seixas, his brother, was hosted at a winter training camp and Pogacar has made a point of praising the Frenchman. If his team were to sign Seixas, they would employ three of the world’s top 10. “In the World Tour,” said Jonathan Vaughters, manager of EF Education EasyPost, “there’s essentially five haves and there’s 13 have-nots.
“Your average budget now is €32m (£27.2m) or €33m and it’s just five teams are on €50m to 55m. You can see with what UAE did last year, winning 100 races, that this year they’re on track to do it again.”
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The American has long been an advocate of a salary cap. “Very few teams are able to win the races now. Everyone else can be there and race for minor placings, but winning is down to just a few teams.”
The issue of spiralling budgets for some teams, while others tread water and make do, has been echoed in other sports. But in cycling there are only a handful of potential Tour de France winners. By the end of this season, Pogacar and UAE Team Emirates may be employing three of them.
A decade ago, according to Vaughters: “There were not four or five huge mega-budget teams that were pushing up the salaries. Now you’ve got bidding wars and what that has done is pushed up team budgets, meaning you are dividing between the haves and have-nots.”
For the French, the curtailing of the Seixas hype, in the face of UAE’s control of the race, has been tough to take. Vaughters sympathises with those feeling the ennui of watching another Tour dominated by Pogacar, with little chance of success for the lesser teams. “The way the sport is set up, we are discouraging sponsors and we are discouraging fans,” he said.
“If you’re not a fan of UAE in cycling, and you aren’t interested in another Pogacar win, why are you watching the race?”
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