Giro-Tour double: Pog vs other recent attempts

First Tour rest day and we need to take stock. There were a ton of unknowns among the pre-race GC favorites, including the recovery statuses of Vingegaard, Roglic, and Evenepoel, plus a major heat check on the recent Giro winner Pogacar. The latter is what I am focusing on here, specifically how is he faring when compared with other recent Giro winners? How are we to know if what he has done so far is better, worse, or business as usual for a Giro winner attempting to win the Tour?

Photo by THOMAS SAMSON/AFP via Getty Images

To that end, I looked at all the riders who podiumed at the Giro and then raced the Tour since 2010. I didn’t want to get into the Lance mess of the oughts. I did include not just the Giro winners but the entire podium from that race to increase the sample size. That’s 14 seasons and potentially 42 Giro podium riders. The actual number of riders was just 11. Far more Giro podiumists skipped the Tour and did the Vuelta.

Four of the 14 seasons had no Giro podium finishers riding the Tour: 2023, 2022, 2019, and 2014, Oh, include 2020 since the Giro happened after the Tour that year. 2018 and 2016 each had two Giro podium boys riding the Tour.

Photo by MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP via Getty Images

So did I learn anything, besides the obvious, that none of these 11 riders won both the Giro and the Tour? Sure, maybe, probably: I mean just 11 riders is a small sample size so I would not bet your house on Pogacar winning or losing the Tour. However, to balance the small sample size, the quality of the riders is a who’s who of the elite GC guys. Froome. Contador. Doom. Nibali. Evans: almost all the major GC guys before the Roglic-Pog-Vinge-Remco generation reared their heads. And as I will say later on, that’s important. I take a closer look at each of the 11 riders at the bottom of this post, but first some thoughts on. what I see, which you can disagree with:

Photo by POOL BERNARD PAPON/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images

None of these 11 riders who podiumed in the Giro and then raced the Tour were leading the Tour after stage 9. Pogacar has already done something that they other GC heavies didn’t.

• All of these 11 riders were also behind the eventual Tour winner. (Usually, but not always there was a different Tour leader than the one who eventually won the race due to the opening stages were either mostly flat stages and the real GC contest hadn't begun or a breakaway winner still had a cushion (hel-lo Thomas Voeckler in 2011).
• All 11 had lost significant time by stage 9. In other words, most of them were out of the GC race by stage 9 even though thelarge majority all of the first nine Tour stages were pretty flat or maybe just had a short wall on one of them. (This year has been unusual with the stage 4 Galibier climb.)
• So if I am not clear above, the Giro winners and other podium finishers never started the Tour hot, and all quickly lost time in the first week. Again, what Pogacar is doing is something we haven’t seen in a long time.
• Some of the 11 Giro guys actually got stronger or at least held their own in the last half of the Tour. 2018 with Froome and Doom meet that standard as did 2011 Contador and 2016 Valverde.
• Only four of the 11 Giro riders lost mega time by the time the Tour ended- 2010 Basso, 2012 Hesjedal, 2013 Evans, and 2016 Nibali all saw an hour+ deficit. Yates in 2021 lost 37 minutes. Two DNFed- Yates in 2021 DNFed on stage 13; 2012 Hesjedal DNSed on stage 6.
• Five finished the Tour within 10 minutes of the race winner: Froome and Doom in 2018 who were the only Giro-Tour double podium winners, 2016 and Valverde, and both 2015 and 2011 Contador. Quintana in 2017 finished 15 minutes back. Look at that list and you see most of the major GC guys of the teens, with Nibali the obvious exception followed by Evans: Froome, Doom, Valverde, Contador and Quintana. Quality wins out.
• So now we have Pogacar attempting the double and so far outperforming by a fair margin these previous 11. He’s in first. he hasn’t lost time except in the TT where Remco was favored to beat him-much like Ganna was favored to beat him in both TTs at the Giro. There isn’t much evidence that he will start naturally fading and thus losing time going forward. To beat him someone is gonna have to rise to his level and beyond.
• I do wonder if the biggest issue of doing the double is the start of the Tour, and not the finish. That’s what the data suggests, limited as it is. Hypothesis: unlike their competitors, after not having ridden a race since the Giro ended, they have a longer time of no race days since their competition would inevitably race the Dauphine, Suisse, Sud, or Slovenia. It seems like it takes a few stages for the Giro podium boys to get their legs under them, and by the time they do they have lost a couple to a few minutes, and from then on they are looking up at their competition. By stage 9 of the Tour we normally see not only who the real contenders are but the eventual race winner is very often in first.
• I am not guaranteeing a Pog win. But I seriously doubt that he will just fade away. The evidence just doesn’t support that. He should stay at this peak that we are seeing. This peak of his does not make it likely that say remco wil beat him in the very hilly TT on stage 20 since Pogs has shown several times he’s aces on hilly TTs. If someone is to beat him, they will have to up their game, and not by just a little. They will have to beat Pogacar at his best, possibly by out-maneuvering him in some tactical sleight of hand.

Below is a look at each of the 11 riders I found for my little study. Their moms love each of them very much.

The 11 riders were:

1. 2021 and Sean Right Yates who finished 3rd in the Giro, 4:15 behind Egan Bernal. Did Yates finish the Tour? Nope! DNF stage 13. But where was he after stage 9? 87th on GC, 37:48 behind eventual winner Tadej Pogacar. When did he start to lose time? Stage 1 where he finished 3:17 behind Alaphillippe on a hilly stage. Yates was just never in contention even with a bunch of flat sprinter stages.
2. 2018 had two Giro podium boys compete in the Tour and both almost did the double. First up is Chris Froome who won the Giro on that stage 20 mountain stage when he crushed Simon Yates. Froome won the Giro by 46 seconds over Tom Dumoulin who is the next participant in this study. So how did Froome do in the Tour? 3rd place, 2:24 behind teammate Geraint Thomas and Doom. Where was he on stage 9? 8th on GC, 59 seconds behind G a and 1:41 behind race leader Greg Van Avermaet. When did he start to lose time? Stage 1 where he finished 91st, 51 seconds behind the winning bunch. His other decisive time loss was on stage 17 in the mountains- 46 seconds. It's just hard to make up time in a Grand Tour. It can be done but those are the memorable Tours that are much rarer than the usual.
3. 2018’s other rider is Doom, who finished 2nd in both the Giro and Tour so...a kind of double-double? (This makes me want to see if this double-double has ever been done before.) Anyway, Doom finished 2nd in the Giro, 46 seconds behind Froome, and then finished 2nd in the Tour, 1:51 behind G. On stage 9 he was 15th on GC, 1:20 behind Thomas and 2:03 behind race leader GVA. His decisive time loss came on stage 6, a Mur de Bretagne stage, where he finished 1:20 behind G.
4. 2017 is next and Nairo Quintana who was second in the Giro, 31 seconds behind Doom. The Tour saw him finish 12th on GC, 15:28 behind winner Froome. After stage 9 he was 2:13 behind Froome. Nairoman lost time on several stages, starting with stage 1 which was a TT stage where he lost 36 seconds to Froome, and stage 5, a mountain stage where he lost a further 14 seconds. He started behind and drip drip dripped time throughout the race.
5. 2016 saw Vincenzo Nibali win the Giro by 52 seconds over Esteban Chaves with a nice assist from a snowbank. He then entered the Tour where there was no snow and so finished 37th in GC behind Froome by 1 hour and 20 minutes. It is safe to say that he lost buckets of time all over the place and by stage 9 was 37th on GC, 34:14 behind Froome with the biggest loss occurring on stage 5 where he lost 9:28, and stage 8 where he bled another 25:54. Oof.
6. 2016 also saw Alejandro Valverde place 3rd at the Giro, 1:17 behind the Shark of Messina. He hung on better at the Tour than Nibbles, finishing 6th on GC, 6:16 behind Froome. On stage 9 he was still 10th on GC, 1:01 behind Froome so after stage 9 he moved up in the GC standings though he kept losing time. Stage 9 saw him lose 42 seconds to Froome.
7. 2015 calls with Alberto Contador who had won the Giro by 1:53 over Fabio Aru. The Accountant finished the Tour 5th on GC, 9:48 behind Froome. Stage 9 saw him also 5th on GC, 1:03 behind Froome. Contador lost little bits of time over the first four stages, 46 seconds in total. Stage 10 saw him drop to 4:04 behind Froome and out of any kind of serious contention. He didn't have a real comeback like he did in 2011. Still he had a top five finish.
8. Skip to 2013 and 3rd place Giro finisher Cadel Evans who finished that race 5:52 behind Nibali. Come the Tour Cadel finished 39th on GC, 1 hour and 30 minutes behind Froome. Through stage 9 Cadel was 16th on GC, 4:36 behind Froome. Where did he lose his time? So many places but let us start on stage 8 where he finished 4:36 in arrears. He kept losing time pretty consistently after that.
9. 2012 saw Roger Hesjedal win the Giro, 16 seconds ahead of J-Rod. Remember that? The Tour wasn’t so kind to him as he DNS on stage 7. Stage 6 is where he hit the wall as he started the stage 9th on GC, 18 seconds behind race leader Cancellara and finished 181st on the fairly flat stage, 13:24 behind stage winner Peter Sagan.
10. 2011 sees Contador back on this list in his weird appeal year. remember? He was busted after the 2010 Tour but won a reversal in Spain on appeal. Then as he was waiting for the CAS decision he raced a very active 2011 including a very difficult Giro by 6:10 ahead of Scarponi who would later be declared champion after Contador lost his appeal. But at the time we didn’t know that and so we saw not only a big Contador win but we saw him enter the Tour where he finished 5th on GC 3:57 behind Cadel Evans. By stage 9 he was 1:18 behind Evans and all of that was lost on stage 1. If you look at the race stage by stage you see Contador getting stronger as the race went on, with his ultimate stage being stage 19 with a long-range attack ending with a 3rd place on Alpe d’huez where Pierre Roland won.
11. 2010 and Ivan Basso joins this list as he won the Giro by 1:51 over David Arroyo (remember that amazing descent by Arroyo off the Mortirolo in the rain?). Anyway, Basso entered the Tour where he finished 30th on GC, 59:33 behind Contador who was later DQed. Stage 9 saw Basso 5:09 behind Andy Schleck who was later awarded the overall win. His big loss on time was on stage 18 but being down 5 minutes by stage 9 says to the world that you are out of contention.

Photo by Tim de Waele/Getty Images