Tadej Pogačar’s announcement last year that he had his sights on winning Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix this season was met with a certain amount of scepticism. ‘Optimistic scepticism’ even, in some quarters: not everybody was entirely enamoured with the two-wheeled Terminator bulldozing his way through 2026.
But here we are, four months into the season, and whether you’re a fan of the Slovenian’s dominance or not, dominant he is. There aren’t many riders who, after just three race days in four months, could command the awe that Pogačar is doing right now. But the panache and the emphatic manner of the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider’s wins in what are arguably the three biggest races of the men’s season so far leave room for nothing, and nobody, else.
So far, Pogačar has wrapped up Milan-San Remo, Strade Bianche and, just this weekend, the Tour of Flanders. His 17km solo escape saw him become the eighth rider to have won the race a record three times and, along with Milan-San Remo, tick off his second Monument win of the season.
Article continues below
As has already been pointed out, a Pogačar on this kind of form could well see him become the first rider in history to win all five Monuments in a single season. Paris-Roubaix, just days away, represents the obvious stumbling block: with no hills and riders at the mercy of a choice of slippery dust or slippery mud on the choppy pavé, Pogačar won’t be in his most natural terroir and, like all the riders, will face a heightened risk of punctures and crashes. But if he does manage to cross the line first in the fabled Roubaix velodrome, only Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Il Lombardia remain – and, with the Slovenian having taken eight wins across the pair, they have Tadej Pogačar written all over them.
What, then, could stop Pogačar from making history by swiping the full set in one season. Well, there are a few things.
His rivals
(Image credit: Ross Bell Photo/Pinarello-Q36.5)
Pogačar may be dominant, but he does get beaten, even on days when he really, really wants to win. It has happened at the Tour de France, and in Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders too. If the Slovenian finds himself on an off-day, or a little bit out of position, there are a number of rivals who could step in and take advantage.
Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5 Pro Cycling) may be recovering from his fall into a ravine at the Volta a Catalunya, but he’ll be back and he has a great record in hilly one-day races, having won Strade Bianche and Amstel Gold.
Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe) can go one better – he has won Liège-Bastogne-Liège on two occasions and, as a card-carrying Belgian hero, is fully invested. He’ll be there at Ardennes Week too, which is more than we can currently say with confidence about Pidcock.
Other riders who, on a good day, could be capable of besting Pogačar on a bad day in the hilly Classics include former LBL runner-up Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek), Pogačar’s own team-mate Isaac del Toro (fifth at Lombardia last year) and, possibly, Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM). The French rider still has much to prove but, at the rate he is progressing, could soon become Pogačar’s nemesis.
Burnout
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Towards the end of last year’s Tour de France, an uncharacteristically gloomy Pogačar told the world that he was looking forward to the race being over. Although we now know he had a potentially race-ending knee injury, it was also revealed after the Tour that the Slovenian was mentally exhausted. His mother even talked about the vague possibility of him retiring early.
Some R&R post-Tour clearly did the trick, because he came back to win the Euros, the Worlds and Lombardia, but we had seen a vulnerable side to him that had not been on display before.
He is now experiencing the double-edged sword of success, honed to its finest edge: the more you win, the more pressure there is. So far this season he will have experienced more of that than ever before as his highly publicised desire to win Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix are pored over. It’s likely at this point that joy takes a back seat to relief each time he wins a major race. Can he keep that up all season long?
‘Acts of God’
Tadej Pogačar (r) displaying more than intended after his Milan-San Remo crash
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Otherwise known as crashes, illness, mechanicals and punctures. It sometimes appears that the most successful riders have better luck than their rivals. But they are, of course, subject to the same rules of the universe as the rest – with a few caveats. They might be slightly less likely to crash because more and more meticulous planning has gone into ensuring that doesn’t happen. Riders around them might take a little more care too – after all, who wants to be responsible for bringing Tadej Pogačar down in a season-ending crash.
But the top riders often end up racing harder, and as the likes of Jonas Vingegaard (Itzulia Basque Country 2024), Wout van Aert (Dwars door Vlaanderen 2024) and Remco Evenepoel (training crash, Dec 2024) have all demonstrated, bad luck happens to the best riders. Even Pogačar has had his fair share of crashes, including a wrist fracture in Liège-Bastogne-Liège 2023 and an unpleasant fall in the recent Milan-San Remo that left him bruised and his bike damaged.
The playing field is level too when it comes to punctures and mechnicals. Pogi’s bike might get an extra look over before a big day, but then so will those of his big rivals. It’s the same for illness, although given how many hands the Slovenian is forced to shake on account of his fame he might experience more viral exposure than most.
And so it’s far from impossible that Pogačar’s assault on the big five one-day races could be ended by a boring, run-of-the-mill piece of a bad luck. A random touch of wheels or an unfortunately placed flint. But let’s hope not – not even his biggest rivals would want that.
There are probably a hundred other random occurrences that might mean Pogačar cannot win or even start one of the remaining Monuments. But those above are the corner marked ‘most likely’. On the other side of the ring, in the white, blue and red corner stands Tadej Pogačar, with his immense wattages, on-bike technical ability and drive to succeed. It’s going to be – literally – a Monumental battle. So far the Slovenian has given no indication that he might lose.
Explore More
Read the full article here
