It was a close call, but Tadej Pogačar nearly didn’t win the recent Tour de France.. An inflammation in his knee during the final week was the best-kept secret of UAE Emirates. Inside the team, there was serious concern, says Belgian champion Tim Wellens to l'Equipe. "I was certain the news was going to leak," he states.
The knee issue first appeared in the seventeenth stage to Valence, which was won in pouring rain by green jersey holder Jonathan Milan. "Tadej came up to me during the stage and said: 'Tim, we have a problem. My knee is killing me.’ It was so bad that he even went down to see the Tour doctor. After that stage, he went for several tests at the hospital. That’s where they discovered the inflammation, but nobody knew! I was sure the news would get out."
It was a close call that the team almost had to decide for him to abandon the race. "That was seriously considered," Wellens recalls. "In the team bus, we also saw that he didn’t look well. You could see that his body had filled with fluid, and he had also gained weight. It was therefore a huge relief that Tadej didn’t give up in the mountains. Everyone wondered why at some point he stopped attacking, but that was understandable. After the Tour de France, we worried about his physical condition."
In the end, things turned out well. It was soon decided that participating in the Vuelta a España was not an option. Toward the end of the season, he then capped it off with four consecutive victories: the Road World Championships, the European Road Championships, Tre Valli Varesine, and for the fifth year running, the Giro di Lombardia.
