There is speculation swirling around Pogačar's performances at the Tour de France, and whether the dominance of that showing suggests doping on his or his team's part.
The speculation is without basis at present, at least on publicly available information, but Team UAE Emirates’ head coach Iñigo San Millán offered an alternative narrative: everyone else isn't particularly good.
In an extensive interview with Velonews, the scientist talked about the perception of the race leader's performances so far.
"It is frustrating people thinking that Tadej has been extra-galactical this year when he has never achieved the numbers (power output) he had last year,” Dr San Millán said.
“He hasn’t achieved those numbers because he has never been challenged. So he’s going slower than last year; the reality is the rest have nothing. Absolutely nothing. They can’t even attack."
Stages 5, 8 and 9 of the race were the catalyst for calls that Pogačar's performances were beyond normal.
Respectively, they were: his time trial stage win, dominating performance from a long-range attack into Le Grand Bornand and easing away from the other contenders on the summit finish to Tignes.
San Millán was speaking ahead of the Mont Ventoux stage, where Pogačar was dropped by Jonas Vingegaard, but even there, the race leader was able to recover and not lose any time by the finish line.
"These guys, they are normally way faster than this,” San Millán said. “Way faster. I mean, they can’t go over six watts per kilogram [here].
“The stage to Tignes was ridiculous. When he [Pogačar] attacked, he attacked a little bit below his threshold, and he even decreased the pace significantly in the last one-and-a-half kilometres. He was like, ‘f**k, man, what is going on here? These guys can’t even follow me'.
“He is not extra-galactical, because nobody is pushing him. He is not even putting out the numbers he did last year. And the rest, they are a shadow of what they have been.
"And then you see Tadej has been having the same level the whole year. He has had higher numbers training than what he is doing in these days.”
There are other possible explanations for the dominance. Missing riders like Primoz Roglic, injured ones like Geraint Thomas and Richie Porte - they were all expected to be the primary challengers to the young Slovenian.
But without them, the void between first and second-placed Guillaume Martin (Cofidis) is currently four minutes and four seconds.
Also, Pogačar's powers of recovery are near legendary, according to past interviews with those in the know, and with a number of hard stages and hard starts to stages, it would make some sense that the 22-year-old is adapting better to the repeated strain of backing up day after day.
The weather on stages 8 and 9 were also raised as a possible factor, with the effect of bad weather having less of an effect on the Tour de France leader.
“It’s possible. Yes, sure. That is a good point,” San Millán said. “We all know that Tadej loves bad weather and he always performs well in bad weather. We know that some riders lose a lot of power."
San Millán did compliment Australian Ben O'Connor (AG2R-Citroen), but more as a way of demonstrating that the team as a whole weren't at a particularly high level, something that would raise suspicions of systematic doping.
“We put the whole team to pull on stage 9, and we couldn’t even get one single second back on O’Connor,” San Millán said.
"He was even putting time on us, yet we had the whole team riding... If we had something [suspicious] going on, we would have put three minutes in half a kilometre on O’Connor, but he was putting time on us.”
There have been calls to release the power data from Pogačar's rides, with the rider saying they might be used against him in a competitive sense. San Millán agreed, adding that some people would continue to doubt no matter what.
“And they will say, 'I assure you that this is not 6.3 (watts per kilo), it is 6.8 because it is impossible because of the VRAM', and this and that,” San Millán said.
"At the end of the day, the more data you give, the more room there is for speculation.”
The Tour de France continues in the Pyrenees with the queen stage of the 2021 edition - the highest point of the race coming atop the Port d’Envalira in the latter half of the stage. Watch from 2030 AEST on SBS and SBS On Demand, with the SKODA Tour Tracker starting slightly earlier at 2010 AEST.
