Tour de France 2021: Overall leader Tadej Pogacar wins second consecutive mountain stage-Sports News , Firstpost

Tadej Pogacar celebrates as he crosses the finish line at stage 18 of the Tour de France. AP

Luz-Ardiden: Overall leader Tadej Pogacar again proved his dominance on the Tour de France as he won a second consecutive mountain stage in the Pyrenees on Thursday and said “it’s a game for me.”

On a short final mountain stage of 130km Pogacar out-ran his two closest rivals, Jonas Vingegaard and Richard Carapaz, just as he did on the previous day’s mountaintop finale.

The 2020 champion continued the most dominant run in recent Tour memory, by climbing the post-race stage four times; as stage winner, as best young rider, as best climber and as the runaway overall leader.

The peloton left Pau under a shadow Thursday after an overnight anti-doping raid on the Bahrain-Victorious team at their hotel.

“It’s something strange, maybe just one more control to see nobody’s hiding anything,” said Pogacar of UAE. “We only found out in the morning, I don’t know what to think,” he said of the raid.

But by the time an Ineos quartet were leading the remnants of the pack up the final climb of this Tour de France, the focus was on the possible challenges to the leader on the road.

With 3km left Pogacar, Vingegaard and Carapaz were again left to cross swords in the battle to the finish. It was quickly settled. Pogacar raced ahead with ease over the last kilometre and slowed down as he crossed the line for his third stage win on this edition.

“I felt good and I’m really happy with the win. It’s a game for me, I’m enjoying playing it,” said the 22-year-old who has dominated in the mountains and on the all-important time-trials, just as Spaniard Alberto Contador and Briton Chris Froome did in their time.

Pogacar enjoying new era

But Pogacar was adamant he was not on the cusp of greatness yet.

“This is not the Pogacar era, but for sure a new generation is here,” he said.

“It’s important to have fun and enjoy what you are doing, some you win some you lose but always have fun, my coach says” Pogacar said smiling and looking relaxed.

“Tomorrow I aim to enjoy every minute of the flat run,” he said of Friday’s stage.

He did admit worries about the final challenge, a 30km time-trial.

“You can lose six minutes over 30km like that,” he said.

Pogacar pulverised the opposition on the first time-trial which he won on stage five.

Pogacar leads the Dane Vingegaard by almost six minutes with Carapaz right on the Jumbo man’s tail in third with three stages left, a flat run Friday, the time-trial and Sunday’s Parade into Paris.