How Tadej Pogacar Turns Pressure Into Power – Tour de France 2025

Tadej Pogacar opens up ahead of the 2025 Tour de France—on pressure, legacy, inspiration, and what he expects in a chaotic opening 10 days. #tdf

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I like to stay at home. That’s all.
Okay. Welcome back to the tour to France. Defending champion.
How does how does it feel in terms of being the defending champion? Is it different or not really? You approach things in the same way?
I experienced it two times before. Both times was different, I think. And uh I think uh now the third time defending the tour, it’s uh even more different, difficult I would say. But uh yeah, I really I really like it. It’s good pressure, I think. And uh yeah, I I think uh I’ve showing off already, so I’m here to enjoy and uh do my my best as always. Try to win the race and uh yeah, try to enjoy it as well.
How do you channel that pressure? like you look at the greats Michael Jordan used to channel pressure in a really interesting way. How do you do it? Yeah, there’s uh many I there’s many pressures coming from uh it’s not only from the from the public from the from the team from uh from yourself there’s many other uh effects also and uh yeah you can always look at at it as a bad thing but also you can take it as a advantage for you and uh yeah if there’s a pressure it means that uh you’re doing something uh that you can do something great out of it. So yeah, uh you you can take it as a as a good thing.
When I’ve been at races, I’ve noticed over the last 12 months a shift and the shift in how many kids are wearing your kit, how much inspiration you’re giving. Does that give you something real pleasure? Yeah, I think um yeah, what I had uh when I was a kid, I had a chance to to ride a bike uh almost for free because of people who supported me and uh yeah um to see so many kids uh wanting to ride a bike because of of what we are doing and uh that’s also the reason behind uh yeah Pog team. I want to to give back uh what many didn’t have when I was a kid or they don’t they don’t have uh yeah many possibilities like me. So it’s nice to see uh so many kids yeah riding with my kit and uh my jersey and uh I’m happy that I can give something back.
Final question. How do you see this first 10 days?
There’s going to be yeah a lot of uh hectic days this uh first 10 days. a lot of uh uncertainties I think uh first city as well. Uh a lot of tricky tricky stages. Thank you mate. And uh yeah just uh
yeah as always we need to be careful not to yeah not to catch some bad luck and uh try to do our best to stay safe. Have a great race. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Not really. We just haven’t been on the same
I guess and I missed
I missed Perry news.
I didn’t do news.
No. Okay. Yonas, the start of another tour to France. uh 12 months ago you and I stood talking and it was a very emotional moment because you were coming back. How different does it feel this time?
H yeah I mean to be honest everything is completely different. Uh now you say it almost brings up memories. Uh I mean as you say last year was very emotional for me. It was my first race since my my terrible crash. Um but yeah, this year is completely different for me. I uh to be honest, I feel like a completely different person compared to last year around this time. So hopefully, yeah, I can do even better. Uh I can see that I’m I’m better now than I was last year. So uh we’ll just have to try every day and see see where it end up.
The doofan was interesting, wasn’t it? because there were moments where there were moments where Tad looked like there was some chinks in the armor in that time trial. Since then, what what did you take from that race and put into your training in between?
No, it’s true that uh I took some time there on on the time trial and uh I mean hopefully I can also do some some good time trials here as well. Uh but obviously I I think we could all see that I was a bit behind in Dolphane and uh we tried to do some some good trainings there and see if I could get a bit better. And uh finally the end of three weeks what’s your hope? What’s the dream?
Ah of course my uh my dream and my goal is to win the tour France again. Uh I don’t show up here to to fight for the second spot. I’m I’m here to try to go for the victory and uh we have a very strong team and we’ll try to use every opportunity that that we have.
Lovely to see you. Thank you very much.
Thank you.