Michael Storer hoping for Tour de France start and places his bet: 'I think he can beat Pogačar at the Tour.'

Jonas Vingegaard dominated the Giro d'Italia and that bodes well for his Tour de France ambitions. Also present in Italy: eventual seventh-place finisher Michael Storer. The Australian from Tudor had a front-row seat to watch the Visma star in action, and is now willing to make a clear call ahead of the Tour de France: "I think he can beat Pogacar at the Tour."

After his fifteenth place in the time trial, Storer sat seventh in the Giro standings, and that would prove to be his final finishing position in Rome. After Italy, the idea was to also ride the Tour de France — at least, the Australian is on Tudor's long list for the race.

However, it's still not certain that he'll actually start in Barcelona. "The first thing is that I need to be fit and healthy, which, in my opinion, is on track," he told Domestique. "But that is for the team to decide in the end. It is a short turnaround from the Giro to the Tour and you need things to go right."

The climber from Perth describes riding both Grand Tours as "a fine balance." Should he start in Barcelona, he'll come up against Vingegaard again. The Dane won the Giro in dominant fashion, and Storer saw firsthand that the Visma star was in "red hot form." "I think he's going to be even better at the Tour than he was at the Giro," the Tudor man predicts.

He continued: "I think he even said in an interview that he is usually better in the second Grand Tour than the first. He's also had a pretty clean run." And so Storer is happy to nail his colours to the mast. "So I would bet on Vingegaard rather than Pogacar for the Tour this year. I'll just put it out there."

Vingegaard was, however, criticised on a number of occasions during the Giro for not racing aggressively enough. "It's not fair to say that he wasn't riding aggressively," Storer says in defence of his Danish rival. "He just didn't need to make a big attack. He could drop us while staying seated. It's a lot less spectacular, but the time gaps he was putting into us showed how strong he was."

He was also able to gauge Vingegaard's strength relative to his own performance. "I was doing better than in previous years at the Giro and I was still getting quite big time gaps from Vingegaard," he said. "So I would say he can beat Pogacar this year at the Tour," the Australian climber repeats.

Storer is well aware of just how tough it is to be a professional cyclist in this generation. "I think the response is just to sit back and applaud them, because I always do the best I can," he said. "Sometimes that has brought me really top results, sometimes good results and sometimes nothing.

But the main thing is trying to do the best I can so I can be proud of my result, whatever the outcome. These top riders are just a step ahead of everyone else. At the Giro, the real race was for second place. It is quite similar when Pogacar is dominating."