Already in the first hour, there were a lot of attacks for the regional breakaway and I already got the feeling that it’s going to be chaotic until the final, and it was,” Pogačar said. It’s not all high-altitude training camps and peaking for July with Pogačar.
Pogačar is turning back the page by even showing up at these northern classics, and he’s rewriting the tried-and-true GC blueprint on how to approach the Tour de France. I don’t know what went wrong if it was placing or what happened, but for sure, if he is in the front, he is on our group.”īy racing this week, the Slovenian is doing something no modern grand tour champion has done in decades. “It was impossible to come back because were pacing all fast in the group and everyone took their role.
“For sure he had the legs to follow, maybe he was a bit too far behind,” van der Poel said. Everyone knew their chances to win would greatly be enhanced if Pogačar wasn’t there. When it crackled on race radio that Pogačar was trying to bridge across, the riders at the front only stepped on the gas. I immediately knew the race was done there,” van der Poel said. We were seven or eight really strong riders. “I didn’t know what was happening with Pogačar, but it was impossible to come back to our group. Even if Pogačar suffered a rare misfire Wednesday, the Dutch superstar knows Pogačar will be a factor in his Flanders debut Sunday. Sure, it’s one thing to blow everyone away when the road tilts up to the heavens for miles on end, it’s quite something else to turn on the watts in a drag race in the trenches across the cobblestones and bergs. It’s Belgian brawlers like Wout van Aert and Greg Van Avermaet who thrive here, not skinny GC stars. Very excited for ‘De Ronde’ on Sunday ! ? /nbw8Qjsn0oĪ few were clucking that Pogačar had overreached by trying to take on the narrow and lumpy Belgian roads of the northern classics. Nice to catch up with my good friend and mentor Allan Peiper at the start. Had my first real taste of the Belgian cobbles today. On the climb, I was full-gas and I couldn’t.” I couldn’t lose some positions in that crash and I should have moved more to the front. “Then we tried again and again, and in the end, it was a good race. It’s racing. I tried to come back but they were too strong and too fast in the front,” Pogačar said at the line. “There was a crash and I stayed behind and I missed that front group.
So what happened? Had Pogačar finally met his tactical match? Or was it a rare moment of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Pogačar is so good and so prolific, the click-bait headline these days is when he doesn’t bend the peloton to his will. What was a surprise is that he missed the winning move and later could not bridge across despite two valiant efforts to close the gap to Mathieu van der Poel, Tom Pidcock, and the front group.įor a rider who is nearly unbeatable these days, Pogačar almost looked - dare we say - like a mere mortal. He’s racing here and again Sunday in part to get a taste of bashing the cobbles at race speed ahead of their return in the Tour de France later this summer. The fact that the two-time Tour de France champion didn’t win Wednesday’s Dwars door Vlaanderen wasn’t a surprise.Īfter all, the 23-year-old hasn’t raced on these Belgian roads since his U23 days. “I wasn’t at the front today, so I don’t know if I can be on the front on Sunday.” “To win Sunday? I don’t know,” Pogačar said at the line about the Tour of Flanders. Yes, his UAE Team Emirates jersey was in the familiar position of all alone in the shot, but this time, he was the one chasing the wheels, not riding everyone off of his.
On Wednesday, at the high-speed rally race otherwise known as Dwars door Vlaanderen, Pogačar seemed to hit a series of speed bumps in Belgium’s lumpy bergs that he could not master with pure brawn and willpower. WAREGEM, Belgium (VN) - Tadej Pogačar is turning mountains into molehills ever since he burst onto the scene in 2019 as a precocious WorldTour rookie.īack-to-back yellow jerseys at the Tour de France only confirmed that it’s going to take a lot more than Alpe d’Huez or the Col du Tourmalet to slow down the 23-year-old Slovenian protege.