June 28, 2023
The two-time Tour de France champion and multiple Monument winner opens up to Rouleur in a revealing and insightful interview, admitting that he sometimes thinks he is too relaxed and saying that in his own personal preference for underdogs, he wouldn’t be cheering for himself
Before an unfortunate crash and broken wrist derailed his Classics season early in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Tadej Pogačar had spent the first part of the year redefining what is possible in road cycling, again.
By the end of 2022, his fourth season as a pro, he’d already been on a streak of 18 consecutive top-six places in stage races, including 11 victories. These included, of course, two Tours de France. Plus he’d won twice at Il Lombardia and once each at Liège and Strade Bianche. Early 2023 was, impossible though that seems, even more special, and he won virtually everything he started. He won Jaén Paraiso Interior and the Vuelta Andalucia (including three stages). He won three stages and the GC of Paris-Nice. He followed fourth in Milan-Sanremo and third in E3 Saxo Classic with victories in the Tour of Flanders, Amstel Gold Race and Flèche Wallonne.
Pogačar may well be the greatest male rider of his generation, and ever since turn- ing professional he has had that rare ability to make winning look easy. According to some, he may well be the first male rider in 50 years really worthy of the ‘Merckx’ comparison. But despite his ubiquity at the front of the biggest bike races in the world since his debut season in 2019, we still know very little about the 24-year-old.
His placid demeanour and propensity for goofing around make us think we know him, but there has also been an air of mystery around the young Slovenian, reinforced by the ability to ride an entire peloton off his wheel.
Pogačar is intriguing in a paradoxical way. He has the face of a choirboy and he rides like he has a killer instinct. But unlike the closest he has to peers in the current peloton – Wout van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel and Remco Evenepoel – winning seems like a byproduct of the main goal, which is to have fun. Bike racing is very much a game to him; it…