Sawt Falasteen - Pogacar confident in his UAE team to deliver third Tour de France title

"It's already my fifth time coming to the Tour and I'm really excited about it," said Pogacar, a back-to-back winner in 2020 and 2021 who finished runner-up in the past two editions to Jonas Vingegaard.

"We've worked really hard all year as a team to prepare for this. We've spent a lot of time together as a group training at altitude and put in a lot of hours in the saddle. We're in a really good place as a group."

Pogacar, 25, will also be bidding for the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France double, last achieved by the late Marco Pantani in 1998, with this year's Tour starting in Florence on June 29.

The Slovenian will be accompanied by Britain's Adam Yates, Spaniards Juan Ayuso and Marc Soler, France's Pavel Sivakov, Portuguese Joao Almeida, Belgian Tim Wellens and Germany's Nils Politt.

"We know what we have to do to support Tadej," said Yates, third in last year's Tour de France.

"We’re aiming for the win and we know if things go our way it's possible so it's just a matter of staying focused and pulling together all the way to Nice.”

Ayuso, winner of the Tour of the Basque Country and third in the 2022 Vuelta, and Almeida, third in last year's Giro, will compete in their first Tour de France.

U.Shaheen--SF-PST