{"id":2327,"date":"2024-07-25T06:34:36","date_gmt":"2024-07-25T06:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/tadej-pogacar-olympics-omission-for-girlfriend-helped-sway-tour-champions-paris-2024-withdrawal\/"},"modified":"2024-07-25T06:34:36","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T06:34:36","slug":"tadej-pogacar-olympics-omission-for-girlfriend-helped-sway-tour-champions-paris-2024-withdrawal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/tadej-pogacar-olympics-omission-for-girlfriend-helped-sway-tour-champions-paris-2024-withdrawal\/","title":{"rendered":"Tadej Pogacar: Olympics omission for girlfriend helped sway Tour champion&#8217;s Paris 2024 withdrawal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Tour de France champion Tadej Pogacar says the Slovenian Olympic Committee (OKS) not selecting his girlfriend Urska Zigart helped sway his decision to withdraw from Paris 2024.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Pogacar, who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/cycling\/articles\/cy08gkr4m9no\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">won his third Tour title on Sunday<\/a>, pulled out of the Games with &#8220;extreme fatigue&#8221;, the OKS said in a statement on Monday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Giro d&#8217;Italia-Tour de France double winner competed in a criterium race in the Netherlands on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Speaking before that race Pogacar said of Zigart\u2019s omission: &#8220;It\u2019s not the main reason, but for sure it didn\u2019t help. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think she deserves her spot. She\u2019s the double national champion in road race and time trial.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Slovenia have selected Urska Pintar, 38, and Eugenia Bujak, 35, for the women&#8217;s road race on 4 August.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Six-time Slovenian champion Bujak did not compete at this year&#8217;s national championships where Pintar, national champion in 2023, finished second, 10 minutes and 47 seconds behind 27-year-old Zigart.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;[Zigart] is the only woman cyclist in Slovenia that ever achieved top 10 in week-long World Tour races,\u201d Pogacar told the Dutch broadcaster NOS. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;She did great in the last two years winning points for Slovenia and, without her, they wouldn\u2019t have two spots in the road race.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Games start in Paris on Friday and 25-year-old Pogacar was scheduled to take part in the road race on 3 August.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He is expected to represent Slovenia in the World Championships in Zurich on 29 September.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Only Belgium&#8217;s Eddy Merckx (1974), Ireland&#8217;s Stephen Roche (1987) and the Netherlands&#8217; Annemiek van Vleuten (2022) have completed cycling&#8217;s triple crown of a Giro, Tour and World Championship win in the same year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/cycling\/articles\/c4ng87zzgl6o\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tour de France champion Tadej Pogacar says the Slovenian Olympic Committee (OKS) not selecting his girlfriend Urska Zigart helped sway his decision to withdraw from Paris 2024. Pogacar, who won his third Tour title on Sunday, pulled out of the Games with &#8220;extreme fatigue&#8221;, the OKS said in a statement on Monday. The Giro d&#8217;Italia-Tour [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cycling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2329,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327\/revisions\/2329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}