At the age of 26, Tadej Pogacar already has a Hall of Fame-level career. The Slovenian seems to win at will, attacking anytime the terrain slopes upwards and – generally speaking – dropping everyone, even the most determined opposition.
It isn’t always plain sailing: he was foiled by Mathieu van der Poel at Milan-San Remo, pegged back by the overwhelming raw power of the Dutchman’s engine every time he tried to distance him. But he got his revenge at the Tour of Flanders, wearing an elite group down – including Van der Poel – through a series of attritional attacks, before striking the killer blow on the final climb of the 269km race. The pair reconvene on Sunday for the final episode in an engrossing trilogy of spring races, as they fight for supremacy at the first three of the year’s Monuments.
Even an ultimately dominant win in the Flemish Ardennes could have ended very differently, had there been a more organised and committed chase. Pogacar is not invincible, but his aura of greatness precedes him. He is inevitably the favourite on every startline.
Which is why his decision to race Paris-Roubaix this weekend is so fascinating. For the first time since perhaps the Tour de France in 2023, Pogacar arrives in Compiegne outside Paris as an underdog, an outsider for the title. At that Tour, the UAE Team Emirates rider was recovering from a fractured wrist in a bad crash at Liege-Bastogne-Liege, the fourth Monument on the calendar and another one he is favourite to win this season, which took place just nine weeks before. He still finished second.
This time around there is no injury to blame. For the first time in years, Pogacar is in his best form and still isn’t the favourite for a race. That he isn’t is a testament to the superb form of Van der Poel, an utter machine in the hardest one-day races and the out-and-out favourite to secure a straight hat-trick of titles in the infamous Roubaix velodrome.
The Dutchman’s combination of incredible power to force himself over the endless sections of leg-sapping cobbles on the route, and his bike-handling skills – honed through years of success as a cyclo-cross rider – make him a fierce opponent. Pogacar, while no slouch himself, is inferior in both senses.
He has proved he can handle cobbles before, gaining time on his rivals on the pavé on the fifth stage of the 2022 Tour de France, and winning three times on the sterrato dust roads of Tuscany at Strade Bianche. But Paris-Roubaix is a very different beast, with cobbles making up around one-fifth of the 259km course, and requiring both immense strength and total concentration.
It was a momentary slip in concentration on a fast descent that saw Pogacar hit the deck at Strade Bianche last month and go tumbling into the grass, losing ground on Tom Pidcock. He still went on to win, but he had the advantage of a steep climb to launch his race-winning attack. Paris-Roubaix does not offer the same terrain: just flat, fast cobbles, with one incline at Mons-en-Pevele where all his rivals are likely to mark his every move. Those bigger and heavier rivals – Van der Poel, Wout van Aert, Mads Pedersen – have the edge on this parcours.
That’s to say nothing of the threat of rain, which is forecast for Sunday. Paris-Roubaix in dry conditions is arid and dusty; in the wet the cobbles become a slip-n-slide and the race becomes even more chaotic. Even Tadej Pogacar cannot control the weather.
Yet he’s still pulling on his rainbow stripes and racing, defying all the odds and conventional wisdom. In theory, Pogacar is no likelier to crash at the “Hell of the North” than anywhere else, but the race’s brutal reputation precedes it. The Slovenian has gone for a high-risk, high-reward strategy. His all-out attacking style and sheer love of the game may not be suited to a race that tends to reward patience and waiting for the right moment. But Pogacar has shown no aversion to ripping up the rulebook in the past; in fact he seems to relish it.
That Strade Bianche crash will likely have given UAE Team Emirates team principal Mauro Gianetti nightmares, and the team hierarchy were keen to dissuade Pogacar from risking his Tour de France title defence and other goals for the season by taking on Paris-Roubaix. But the lure of the cobbles clearly proved too strong for the world champion.
Perhaps the challenge of taking on a rare race he isn’t expected to win, the opportunity to push himself to ever greater heights, to go even further to cement his name as one of the greats, was also a draw. No defending Tour de France champion has ridden Paris-Roubaix since Greg LeMond in 1991. The American finished 55th, and it was bad news for his Tour defence too, as he finished seventh.
The last defending maillot jaune to win Roubaix was a familiar name, Eddy Merckx, in 1973, and possibly the only rider who stands in the way of Pogacar being crowned the greatest of all time. The odds are stacked against him – but that tends to be when he is at his most brilliant.
Paris-Roubaix starts at 10.10am (UK time) on Sunday 13 April. TV coverage begins at 10am on TNT Sports 1
Tadej Pogacar gets revenge on Mathieu van der Poel with dominant Tour of Flanders victory
Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogacar resume hostilities in Spring Classics duel for supremacy
Tom Pidcock to ride Giro d’Italia for first time as Q36.5 squad receive wildcard
Tadej Pogacar gets revenge on Mathieu van der Poel with Tour of Flanders victory
Van der Poel and Pogacar face off once more as Spring Classics duel continues
Tom Pidcock to ride Giro d’Italia for first time as Q36.5 squad receive wildcard
