The China Mail - Pogacar inspired by Djokovic after Tour de France jeers

Pogacar stormed to another dominant stage victory on France's Bastille Day national holiday to extend his overall lead to more than three and a half minutes.

It was his 24th stage win since his debut Tour in 2020 and leaves the four-time overall winner with his largest ever lead at this stage of the three-week race.

But he faced some boos on the mountainous roads around the central Cantal region.

"Haters gonna hate, it's always like this, even though (in) cycling (there) is not as much as... in tennis or football there is much more booing and going against one team or one player," said the 27-year-old Slovenian.

"If they boo me on the road, they actually boo the whole bunch because you don't know who it is, because we pass all together.

"I always think about tennis, Novak Djokovic, how great a mentality he has.

"He had one of the toughest careers about this, about getting boos and unnecessarily, because he's the greatest.

"When someone is booing, I look up to Novak Djokovic and think about him."

Djokovic was most recently booed on the Wimbledon Centre Court after smashing a ball in frustration having lost a point and his serve.

Pogacar insisted that those jeering him were just a tiny minority.

"In cycling, it's actually not so much booing, it's like 99 percent of people are cheering for everybody," he said.

"When you see the kids, you can see that there is a family of kids and they are wearing different jerseys.

"One is wearing Visma, one is wearing Groupama and one is wearing UAE and you can see that they have their favourites, but it's in the family and it's really nice to see.

"Cycling fans are the greatest between all the sports, so we should be happy and grateful for all the fans and to all the booers that are there, I think they just give more boost to my teammates and they put wood on the fire."

- 'Tadej on a different level' -

As for his huge lead, Pogacar said he was still wary about the high mountain stages yet to come, particularly in the Alps in the final week.

"The (way) the Tour so far was laid out (was) really good for our capabilities of the team," said Pogacar.

"That was our advantage (in) the first 10 days and we will see when the big mountains come, like Alpe d'Huez or Markstein.

"I hope that my form will be also good for this kind of days, but I think for sure the competitors will be also ready for the big mountains.

"I need to be really focused and not to get too ahead of myself and keep calm and think about that anything can happen in one day and one day you can lose 30 minutes easily."

As for his rivals, for some the Tour is already over and the real battle is for the minor placings with Jonas Vingegaard in second just over a minute and a half ahead of Isaac Del Toro in seventh.

"Tadej for now is on a different level and he's basically doing a different race than us," said Spaniard Juan Ayuso, who moved up a place to fourth and took the best young rider's white jersey off Del Toro.

"It's nice to be back in the jersey," he added.

"Every day you have to give the best you have because we're seeing that there's five or six riders that we're aiming for two spots on the podium.

"So it's going to be a really, really hard battle to be on that podium in Paris."

He is just one place and 13 seconds ahead of teenage French debutant Paul Seixas.

The 19-year-old gained eight seconds on Ayuso but said that he was not even thinking about the white jersey.

"There is a long way to go in the Tour, you have to be able to not do something silly and everyone was on their limit," he said.

"I wasn't even thinking about what I needed to take the white jersey, I was just fighting to stay with that group."

E.Choi--ThChM