Above all, do not trust your composure.
With Tadej Pogacar, everything goes fast, very fast.
Too fast?
A blond head still disheveled by the thunderclap that has just shaken the Grande Boucle.
A thunderbolt.
A magic trick.
His.
And his clear eyes, his hairless cheeks… We would give him 16 years.
He's going to have 22 this Monday.
Not very old and already king.
The kid looks around, at the top of this Planche des Belles Filles which has given itself outrageously to the new lord of the road.
He hesitates between crying and smiling.
"I never thought of this yellow jersey, he launches the calm voice, once the emotion subsides.
This is insane.
My dream was just to be on the Tour.
"
The young dolphin became king prematurely.
It's innate in him.
Its precocity does not in any way frighten it.
"I'm in no hurry," he slipped coldly before his fiery time trial, as if he was content with this supporting role on the Tour.
But the flame was smoldering.
It set ablaze a sky that had become all gray above the homeland of Thibaut Pinot and its white smoke ran as far as Slovenia.
Where it all started.
In Komenda exactly, city of 6000 souls about twenty kilometers north of the capital Ljubljana.
A mother Marjeta, professor of French at the university, a father Mirko, industrial designer in a furniture factory, and a shrimp, a featherweight who seeks to follow in the footsteps of his big brother.
"I love life, the little things"
Tadej is not yet 9 years old and he rides a small green bicycle.
Her friends have fun with this puny silhouette clinging to everything that precedes her.
“Imp,” they call him.
The pixie doesn't make them laugh for long.
He quickly took the reins of the pelotons, his rage stuck to the handlebars.
But as soon as he sets foot on the ground, he enjoys the life around him.
"It's very simple, he does absolutely what he wants", laugh his teammates.
There is no time for wonders.
Tadej Pogacar, ignoring the rules laid down in dogmas by trainers, physiologists and cycling doctors, sleeps or eats when he wants, often pretends to listen to the elders, and leads his life as he sees fit.
He's funny too, like a mischievous teenager who senses that the fate in front of him will be rather golden.
“I like life, the little things, I like to have fun, I've always been like that,” he says.
Its beginnings are thunderous.
In 2016, he won the Slovenian Junior Time Trial Championship and finished a bronze medal in the European Junior Road Championship.
Then he won the Tour de l'Avenir, the equivalent of the Grande Boucle for juniors.
A first big spotlight.
He then ran for the continental team Ljubljana Gusto Xaurum, but his country was now too small for him.
The world is opening up.
The world offers itself.
The light has sprung and she will never leave him.
The halo that escorts him turns all eyes on him.
Lusts too.
The first to draw come from the Middle East.
The UEA United Arab Emirates team enlisted him as a teammate for Italian Fabio Aru last season.
Fan of Alberto Contador
"I'm going to put myself at his service but I don't want to be like him, he slips when signing.
I have my own way to make.
A golden furrow.
A year ago, Pogacar set out to conquer Spain and is already shaking the continent.
In September, he won three mountain stages of the Tour of Spain, where he took 3rd place, 2'38 "behind the winner… his compatriot Primoz Roglic.
Today, the younger has outclassed the older one.
He became the youngest winner of the post-war Tour, pocketed three stages in the process, sprinted in the mountains, rolled on the plain, crushed the pedals as hard as the competition, dumbfounded.
He unties the Grande Boucle on his first attempt like Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault or Laurent Fignon before him.
The President of Slovenia, Borut Pahor will attend his coronation on the Champs-Elysées this Sunday.
“I don't know what to say, it's hard to accept,” he says.
I was a fan of Alberto Contador.
"
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Pogacar is a young man barely out of his teens, who crams Netflix when he gets off his bike.
A son of a good family who moved last winter with his partner, cyclist Urska Zigart, to Monaco.
As if he needed a kingdom or a principality.
His reign has only just begun and the throne does not seem too big for him.
This is what is scary.
His future opponents, he will not necessarily find them on the road, but rather just above him, doubts floating like the ghosts of the past ...
