Tadej Pogacar was ten or eleven years old when Andrej Hauptman, now his sporting director in the United Arab Emirates, spotted him riding in a local criterium in Slovenia. The bike was too big, as was the helmet. The future Tour de France winner was at the back of the pack, a few heads shorter than all his opponents.
It was unfair, Hauptman thought, and the former racer went to the race direction and asked if they could help the little man a little. They laughed at him. He would rather it were the other way around. Pogacar had lapped the entire pack in one lap. By then he was already much better than the rest.
In that respect, little has changed in 15 years. During the last Tour, Pogacar was playing with his competitors, who are no longer two heads taller than him. The numbers: six stage wins, a lead of more than six minutes over the first attacker and rival Jonas Vingegaard, breaking records at Galibier, Pla d’Adet, Plateau de Beille, Isola 2000 and Col de la Couillole. He alone achieved more victories this season than the entire Visma-Lease a Bike or Alpecin-Deceuninck teams. And he was the first, after Pantani in 1998, to win the Giro-Tour double.
How does someone do that? Achieve a feat that others consider impossible? The question was asked of him, along with additional suspicions, every day for the past week. What is behind this that the outside world does not see? It is not for nothing that Hauptman (49), a trusted man of Pogacar’s team, has been saying since the stages in the Pyrenees that this is the best version of the Slovenian of all time.
Laissez faire
Pogacar’s victory shows that talent alone is no longer enough, as it was in the 2020 and 2021 editions, which he won in the United Arab Emirates a long time ago. laissez faire: let him do his divine way and everything will be fine. Almost always it went well. However, the lack of a master plan and thorough preparation, as they are used to at Visma, made them fall back twice in the Tour.
The impulsive leader’s impulses still prevail, although they are now backed by science and knowledge. If Pogacar senses a moment of weakness in Vingegaard, as at Plateau de Beille, he attacks mercilessly and without a moment’s hesitation.
“In my first year, 2019, when I rode the Vuelta, everything was amateur. At that time I thought everything was going to be professional, but we have made great progress in recent years,” says Pogacar, who had a bad start a year ago due to a broken wrist after a fall in Liège-Bastogne-Liège. According to him, his progress does not lie in one aspect alone, but in the sum of its parts.
After two consecutive defeats (Vingegaard won the 2022 and 2023 Tours), the UAE team took some measures to prevent this from happening a third time. In the person of Javier Sola (38), who says that the Slovenian touched him “a magic wand”, Pogacar got a new coach with a fresh philosophy.
Greater intensity
The Spaniard is also responsible for the schedule of Sjoerd Bax (28), Pogacar’s teammate. “Sola allows him to put in blocks of higher intensity. Before, training sessions were more uniform in a ‘grey zone’, which reduced the effect,” said the Dutchman when asked. An additional advantage is that Pogacar has become even more explosive uphill.
The weaknesses were studied and mitigated. After Pogacar had to descend at altitude in the previous editions in the Alps on the Col du Granon and the Col de la Loze, the Slovenian worked harder on his adaptation to the air this season by training more at altitude. The problem he had with the heat was also solved by Sola.
According to Joxean Matxin (53), the UAE’s sports director, who together with his colleague Mauro Gianetti managed teams under contract with notorious doping users, one change that should not be underestimated is the change in season planning. A shortened spring without the Tour of Flanders makes him less vulnerable. That’s the idea.
Bax: “As a result, it is now sharper and lighter than ever. The extra kilos are necessary in the classics to avoid getting sick in the cold, for example, but they are an unnecessary burden in the mountains.”
Power supply
The gut feeling has also given way to science in the field of nutrition. As he has been doing at Visma for years, Pogacar has been receiving a balanced diet in recent months to optimise recovery and performance on the bike.
Previously, the Slovenian was unable to mentally follow the prescribed diet, but it was only after being defeated for the second time by Vingegaard in France that he realised that things had to be different.
What remains is the material such as wheels, tyres and the gearbox. After extensive analysis, the team opted for the fastest material. “After last year everything was changed,” Bax confirms. “Sponsorship deals are no longer considered. Quality is the leader.”
Despite his dominance at the Tour, Pogacar can still improve in the coming years, Bax and Matxin believe. The latter: “Remember that he is still only 25 years old, his best years are yet to come.”
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