Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) didn’t dream of winning the Tour de France. He started cycling at around nine years old, following his brother’s tracks. His wilder ambitions at the time and until very recently were merely to participate in Grand Tours, and mostly the French one, as he was captivated by the magic of racing over mountains and through boiling crowds of fans.
“We watched the race on TV”, the Slovenian wonderkid recalled when his raw talent started making waves in the big world of cycling. “It was amazing. We had our idols and we used to fight over who was the best. I was always for the Schleck brothers, but also [Alberto] Contador and the big ones.”
Like Contador, Pogačar has lit fireworks on the roads of La Vuelta (three stage wins and a historic third place on the overall podium of the 2019 edition) and he's become a Grand Tour winner on French roads. Fränk Schleck never won a three-week race (his best result was third at the 2011 Tour de France won by Cadel Evans) but he was one of the best riders from his generation on one-day hilly races.
Pogačar would rather emulate Andy Schleck, who shone on both terrains, winning the Tour de France (in 2010) and a Monument, when he soloed to victory in Liège-Bastogne-Liège (2009). “I want to win a lot of races”, the Slovenian winner of the Tour claims. And he’s willing to take every race that crosses his winning path: “I like one-day races, and also stage races.”
The second part of his 2020 season, now that he won the Tour de France on his first attempt (an unprecedented feat since Laurent Fignon achieved it in 1983), sees him turn to the Classics. Pogačar is heading for Belgium, where he’ll take on the Flèche Wallonne (September 30th), Liège-Bastogne-Liège (October 4th) and the Tour of Flanders (October 18th). He’s not among the biggest favourites right now. But it’s hard to put any limit on what the young star can achieve.
The 2020 Tour de France was the perfect opportunity to display the skills that make him an absolute prodigy in three-week races. Pogačar is a strong climber who doesn’t pull his punches. And he has clearly demonstrated his time trial dominance. He always keeps his composure to limit his occasional losses, through the wind on Stage 7 or on the mighty slopes up Col de la Loze (Stage 17), and make the most of his opportunities to take time on his rivals. He recovers extremely well from his efforts. He has superior stamina and he’s explosive enough to drop his rivals uphill or dominate them in a sprint, as he did on Stage 9 in Laruns.
This set of abilities can translate into strong performances in one-day races and Pogačar has already shown signs that he can do well in this field, even though his record in Classics doesn’t – yet – match his outstanding achievements on stage races.
Early in his neo-pro season (2019), he rode the famed Strade Bianche and came 30th. A month later, he was sixth in the Gran Premio Miguel Indurain, gearing up for his first Northern classics: DNF in the Amstel Gold Race, 53rd at La Flèche Wallonne and 18th in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, finishing in the same group as Julian Alaphilippe and the former UCI World Champion Michal Kwiatkwoski, after 256 demanding kilometres of racing, at just 20 years of age.
“I’m happy with that performance”, he reflected at the end of the 2019 season. “It was one of my hardest races this year but there’s nothing to be afraid of with the kilometres. It was raining all day, it was a long race but I was feeling really good.”
As a kid, Tadej already had a knack for the unique intensity one-day races can bring: “The crowd, the adrenaline of racing… The Sunday races, it was small races in Slovenia, but it was exciting and full-on adrenaline.” As he grew up through the world of cycling, Pogačar also ventured onto the cobbles of the Tour of Flanders U23, in 2018. The Slovenian youngster was only 19, racing with more seasoned riders, but he reached Oudenaarde at the front and finished 15th, in the same group as the Swiss Marc Hirschi.
Tadej Pogačar hasn’t had many opportunities to show his talents on one-day races in 2020 but he returned to Strade Bianche (13th) when competitive cycling came back this summer, and he showed on the longest Monument of all that he doesn’t fear long-distance racing: 12th on a 300km Milano-Sanremo.
Pogačar isn’t the only Slovenian shining these days and, before Slovenia became the 15th country to have a Tour de France winner, Primož Roglič (Team Jumbo-Visma) had already claimed his nation’s first Grand Tour victory, in the 2019 Vuelta Ciclista España. At the end of August, Luka Mezgec (Mitchelton-Scott) came second in the Bretagne Classic – Ouest-France. A rider like Bahrain-McLaren’s Matej Mohoric has proved his worth over one-day events with victory in the U23 UCI Road World Championships (2013, before turning 19) and two-top 10 finishes in Sanremo (5th in 2019, 10th in 2020). Now Pogačar is joining them on the hunt for one-day triumphs.