Pogačar looks ahead to Tour with Giro all but won

The UAE Team Emirates rider pushed his lead to almost seven minutes last weekend, and can now take it tranquillo to Rome

- Adam Becket

The last time a rider won the Giro d’Italia by more than seven minutes, Tadej Pogačar was seven years old. That was Ivan Basso in 2006, with the Italian winning by over nine minutes in the end.

Eighteen years on, Pogačar has the chance to make history this weekend, as he seeks to hammer home his domination of his first ever Giro. After stage 15 on Sunday, the UAE Team Emirates man led Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) by almost seven minutes – 6:41 – with no sign of anything threatening his lead.

The Slovenian followed up an excellent performance in the second individual time trial on Saturday, when he finished second to a rampant Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) with a ride for the ages on Sunday. Attacking with 14km to go, Pogačar reeled in the remnants of the breakaway, and ended up putting 2:50 into Thomas and Dani Martínez (Bora-Hansgrohe), his podium peers. The dominance is such that thoughts have already moved forward to the Tour de France, where he will seek to become the first man since Marco Pantani in 1998 to win the Giro-Tour double. Of course, anything could happen in the final week of racing, but Pogačar seems set to win his third Grand Tour. The only live questions seem to be ‘by how much?’ and ‘with how many stage wins?’.