Tadej took a big step towards the final victory in the 111th Tour de France on stage 19. After his team-mates from UAE Team Emirates controlled the action in the peloton on the Vars and Bonette passes, Tadej attacked on the final climb to Isola 2000, where he also completed his altitude preparations before the Tour. He left Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel behind and set out to chase Matteo Jorgenson, who was trying to take the stage win from the breakaway group for the Visma Lease a Bike team.
Tadej caught up with him 2 kilometers before the finish line. Then he drove towards his fourth stage victory at this year’s Tour in front of many Slovenian fans, including his parents Marjeta and Mirko, sister Vita and fiancee Urška Žigart.
“It has been confirmed that this was the Queen stage of the Tour. The Bonette is a scary hill to race on. It’s nice in training, because you can skip the last kilometer. Luckily I had good legs. We trained here for the whole month between the Giro and the Tour, it was a very demanding period. No day was easy, because every day we had to climb Isola 2000. That’s why I knew this climb extremely well. During the training camp we discussed with my teammates how it would be best to race here, and we performed this stage exactly as we planned. To the point where I attacked. Everything was 100% perfect,” Tadej assessed the day, after which he leeds Vingegaard by 5:03 and Evenepoel by 7:01.
“Now the advantage is already big, I am very satisfied. Tomorrow we can just enjoy the stage and let the break away go. We will be able to enjoy the roads on which we trained long before the Tour and on which I have been training for almost my entire career. I hope that nothing serious will happen,” Tadej hopes that Isola 2000 decided the winner of the 2024 Tour, after he already won the 2020 and 2021 editions.
For the first time he celebrated as many as four stages of victories. “This Tour was really outstanding with stage wins. Let’s say this year I balanced last year when I only got two stages. Now I’m back to repeating three stage wins at every Tour. It’s crazy, I’m extremely proud and happy,” Tadej said after his 18th victory this year. This season, in which he is on his way to winning the Giro-Tour double for the first time since Marco Pantani did it in 1998, is already the most successful of his career.
However, the Grande boucle is not finished yet, the 20th stage will take the peloton over the passes of Braus, Turini, Colmaine and Couillole. Tadej knows them very well from daily training, as well as Turbie and Eze, which will be part of the final time trial from Monaco to Nice.