Former Spanish cycling great Miguel Indurain said he thinks Tadej Pogachar could follow in his footsteps and win this year's Giro d'Italia and Tour de France in a single season.

Indurain won the Giro and Tour back-to-back in 1992 and 1993. After Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour titles, Indurain remains the only rider in history to win the Tour de France five times in a row.

But while Pogachar has the potential to win both Grand Tours, the UAE Team Emirates rider has a tendency to go on long breaks, which could be a problem, Indurain told Cycling News earlier this week.

"If you're competing in both Grand Tours, you have to be careful how you manage your energy.

Pogachar recently won the Catalunya Pass by the largest margin in 64 years, winning four stages.

Asked if Pogachar could win both the Giro and the Tour in one season, Indurain said, "He certainly has the ability. Of course he has it."

"In my time, the season was handled differently, but no matter what approach you take, it remains a very difficult challenge.

But some things never change, and Indurain warned that strong performances like Pogachar's in March could take their toll deep into the season.

"If he's winning now, he may pay for it later," Indurain told Cycling News.

"But there's a lot more data on output, wattage, etc. now than in my day, so managing your efforts is much easier."

"I think it's a lot easier to manage your efforts now.

Mentally, he said, running two Grand Tours in a row for GC is a considerable demand. 'The effort is huge, even if it varies from rider to rider. And after starting in the Giro, there is the question of whether he will be able to maintain his form until the end of the third week of the Tour. The last week in particular could wear him down."

At the same time, he added, "It's important to stay focused on the race in front of you. Each race is different, whether it's a time trial or a mountain race. You can't race the Giro thinking about what might happen in the Tour."

As for the period between the Giro and the Tour, "It was different in my time, there was less time. In any case, you have to strike a balance between slowing down too much to rest and training too hard. That is very difficult."

Pogachar, who won his first Tour at age 27, is only 25, but Indurain does not feel that makes a big difference.

"In my time, if you were older, you could run longer distances and had more endurance, so that might have been an advantage. But these days the trainers know everything and how he reacts to different efforts, so it shouldn't be a problem."

For a challenge of this magnitude, he says, it is important to have a good team, regardless of the era, and "the efforts a leader makes have to be very specific." And, he says, "the efforts of the leader must be very specific." El Pistolero says that one of the reasons he did not come close to "achieving the double" in 2015 was that he had to make a ridiculous solo effort to win the Giro d'Italia because he did not have a strong team, and he had to pay for that long-term fatigue in the Tour I have often stated that it was.

"But Pogachar's racing style," Indurain adds, "is not heavily dependent on the team. Watching Pogachar make a ridiculously long break to win the Strade Bianche on television, he said.

"That's the way he does it and that's the way it will always be. "

Currently in training camp in the Sierra Nevada, Pogachar's next races are the Liege-Bastogne-Liege on April 20 and the Giro d'Italia on May 4. Indurain himself, who retired almost 30 years ago, still enjoys racing in off-road events and will compete in the Skoda Titan Desert event in Morocco from April 28 to May 3.