A spectre is haunting the peloton, as the season transitions from the summer into its autumnal phase — the spectre of Tadej Pogačar, and his imminent return to racing.
In the seven-and-a-half weeks since the Slovenian last pinned a race number (on the final day of the Tour de France, when he sealed overall victory), there’s been a renewed sense of openness to the racing. Without the world’s best rider present to time and time again ride them off his wheel with grim predictability, suddenly the sky was the limit for other participants. Take the Vuelta a España, where all bets were off as to who would win, with the race situation and hierarchy changing almost daily. Even the riders further adrift weren’t settling for the best-of-the-rest spots behind an unassailable foe —they were riding for the win.
So many riders will have received the news that Pogačar will be back among them this week with a certain sense of dismay. Earlier this week he confirmed that he will participate in both this week’s Canadian WorldTour classics, the GP de Québec on Friday and GP de Montréal on Sunday. And he won’t be done then there, either, with the World Championships this month, before October’s Il Lombardia his final target of the season, which he will build towards in some of the preceding autumntime Italian Classics.
By way of an announcement, Pogačar took to Instagram. In his typically affable manner, he posted a montage of himself training captioned ‘Can’t wait for the Canada races’, in what felt like a good-natured warning shot to his rivals that, rested after his post-Tour break and hungry for more success, he means business. The video also set the online rumour mill spinning, too, due to a brief glimpse of his power meter. Amateur sleuths crunched the numbers, and most came to the conclusion that the numbers were frighteningly good, and we should expect to see a Pogačar every bit as strong as the one who conquered all during the spring and the summer.
Not that that should come as much of a surprise. Throughout his career Pogačar has never needed time to build up towards his top shape, and has the physical ability to retain his peak for multiple races a season, and this year that has been especially true. He started with a bang by winning Strade Bianche with a shattering solo attack over 80km from the finish, and continued in that vein the rest of the spring, dominating Volta a Catalunya with four stage wins and…