After a second straight day of complete domination in the Volta a Catalunya for Tadej Pogačar, post-stage questions are rapidly swivelling from whether he thinks he can win to how many stages he would like to add to his palmares.
Clinching a victory is never that straightforward, obviously, particularly when it comes after 4,000 metres of climbing and a mammoth Pyrenean ascent, in this case the 18-kilometre Port Ainé, to complete it all.
But Pogačar has the champions’ gift of making the complicated look simple, and even if he said afterwards he was tired, the way he briskly despatched one GC attack of the day by Mikel Landa (Soudal-QuickStep) and then remorselessly prised open a 48-second gap on his closest pursuer, could hardly do anything but impress.
Two stages out of two, then, not to mention a very narrow miss at a third out of three on stage 1 behind late breakaway Nick Schultz, have already gone to Pogačar. But when asked afterwards how many Volta stage victories he would like, Pogačar made it clear he’s not stopping at any particular number.
“If you can win, you win and you don’t hesitate,” he said. “All the 175 riders that were on the start here want to win, and if the team works so hard for you all the year round, not just what you see on the TV, then I won’t say they expect you to win, but it’s what they are fighting for too.
“So we try to win as much as we can if we can stay strong as a team together.”
The day itself played out ideally for Pogačar, with the news that after Jay Vine was a DNF on stage 2, another UAE rider, Felix Grosschartner, had gone down with stomach issues, the one new cloud on the team’s radar. In any case, going for a second summit finish victory in as many stages seemed like the natural conclusion to the team’s work throughout the day.
“Our plan was to be as solid as possible as a team. We already lost Jay and Felix has stomach problems as well so we wanted to be strong as a unit. The guys did a great job on the first climbs” – three Pyrenean ascents, two HC and one cat 1 were on the day’s menu – “and going down into the valley, it was pretty simple.”
“Domen [Novak], our Lamborghini tractor, was pulling at a good pace, and it was super easy to the second last climb.
“That’s when Visma-Lease A Bike started to pull and that’s where things got a bit more intense. But for me, it…
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