‘I’m on the right road to the Tour de France’ – Tadej Pogačar brings curtain down on Italian campaign in Rome

In Ancient Roman triumphal parades, so the belief goes, victorious generals were followed by a slave repeatedly whispering the words ‘memento mori’ to remind the feted commander of his own mortality and to warn him against slipping into complacency.

In the Rome of 2024, a similar service can be provided by disinterested locals who happen to find their regular routine impeded by the aftermath of the Giro d’Italia. 

As Tadej Pogačar and his UAE Team Emirates companions huddled to celebrate victory in the middle of Via di San Gregorio on Sunday evening, an elderly woman reached out across the barrier and nudged a reporter who was observing the scrum of photographers forming them.

“Is that the winner?” she demanded.

“It is,” came the response.

“And what’s his name?” she continued.

“Tadej Pogačar.”

“Who?” she asked, straining to catch the unfamiliar syllables.

“Tadej Pogačar,” the reporter said, a little louder this time.

“Who?” she persisted.

After that reporter eventually edged away, she tried her luck with another, and the same conversation repeated itself with the same insistence. In three weeks, nobody at this Giro came remotely close to cutting Pogačar down to size like this. It took a Romana DOC all of 10 seconds to manage it.

Not that Pogačar heard it, of course. The winner of the Giro is always dragged through a personal Via Crucis of official protocols on crossing the line. After exchanging congratulations with his teammates, he was quickly ushered along the Via Triumphalis towards the Arch of Constantine, where the podium had been erected in the shadow of the Colosseum.

The triumphal arch served as the finish line of the marathon at the Rome Olympic Games, when Abebe Bikila ran barefoot to claim the gold medal. After catching a moment with his partner, the Liv-Jayco-AlUla rider Urška Žigart, Pogačar began a marathon of his own, given that the final day’s podium ceremony at the Giro features no fewer than 14 presentations, and his presence was required until the very end.

Indeed, Pogačar’s ordeal was extended by having to wait for the arrival of Italy’s far-right prime minister Giorgia Meloni, on hand to use the Giro’s primetime television slot as part of her campaigning for next month’s European elections. RCS Sport, it seems, was only happy to oblige. She and RCS CEO Urbano Cairo presented Pogačar with the Trofeo Senza Fine of race winner.

During his repeated visits to the podium, Pogačar was also presented with the blue jersey of king of the mountains and the Trofeo Bonacossa, a sort of special merit prize. Earlier, he had climbed onto the podium bearing the flags of both his native Slovenia and that of his primary sponsor, the United Arab Emirates, and there was a sizeable delegation from Abu Dhabi present in Rome to watch him complete the first leg of his planned Giro-Tour double.

The sun had already begun to set by the time Pogačar had run the full gauntlet of podium presentations. His next task was to beat a path to the mixed zone through the tifosi and tourists swarming Via di San Gregorio, now that the Giro’s road crew had already begun to dismantle the barriers.

“It’s getting to be a long day now,” Pogačar protested politely when he began his sequence of television interviews. “I think I don’t realise yet what it means to win the Giro. Let’s get through this day, all the media and everything, and then we will slowly realise what I achieve now. It’s a bit crazy.”

Pogačar’s has been a victory foretold, of course, and he has had ample time to digest the coming triumph, having led the race since Oropa on stage 2 and effectively ended the contest in the Perugia time trial five days later. Indeed, long before he was feted in Rome on Sunday evening, the conversation had long since moved on to his next campaign north of the Alps in July, when he seeks to reconquer the Tour de France from Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike).

“Let’s switch off for a few days, and then switch on 100% focus and go for the Tour,” Pogačar said when asked about the next instalment. “I’m on the right road to the Tour de France. 

"In the last few days, I had amazing legs. For the third week, it was really good, and I can recover really good from these efforts, so the legs can be the same – or even better.”

The next stop of Pogačar’s itinerary was Piazza del Campidoglio, where the press room was housed in the Capitoline Museums. In recent years, the pink jersey of the Giro has spoken with the written press each day via video link rather than making the trek to the sala stampa.

The tradition of appearing in person before the fourth estate on the final night of the race has been maintained, and a small platoon of Slovenian journalists followed Pogačar on his journey past the Colosseum and beyond the Victor Emmanuel Monument. He paused for another photo opportunity above the Forum, before climbing the steps into the press room.

By the previous standards of this occasion, the press conference was perfunctory, but then Pogačar had already said more or less all he had to say on this Giro, having worn the pink jersey for 20 days, annexed six stages and won the whole race by just under ten minutes. After three weeks of effervescent performances on the bike, there was a sign of mental fatigue here.

“Oh, this one’s difficult. I don’t know. I’m tired,” Pogačar smiled apologetically when asked how his Giro debut had changed him as a man, though he politely tried to summon up some kind of an answer all the same.

Asked about the significance of winning the Giro, Pogačar smiled again. “I will be super happy when everything is over,” he said. “Now is the last push with everything. Let’s think in two or three days, when everything is going to be perfect.”

With that, Pogačar was finally freed of his official obligations, at least until Monday morning, when his presence is required at Giro sponsor Eataly’s store in Ostiense for another round of interviews. 

It’s hard to shake off the sense that the aftermath of the Giro was more taxing for him than the winning of it.