Tadej Pogačar Has a Message to Send in Final Race Before the Tour de France

Tadej Pogačar got to watch the kids play around last week at the Dauphiné, and now The King is Back to set the serious mark for the Tour de France.

Pogačar returns to racing with UAE Emirates XRG on Wednesday at the Tour de Suisse as they test the turbos before hitting blast-off at Le Tour.

And provided it’s not all AI, footage circulating on social media suggests Pogi is extra lean and moving fast.

Expect a muscle-flexing power show from the super-Slovenian at the Tour de Suisse as he looks to reassert who’s boss.

“Training has gone very well, both individually and as a team. I’m arriving at the Tour de Suisse feeling strong and motivated,” Pogačar warned Monday in a team note.

Jonas Vingegaard did his own Pog-pression when he rampaged across the Giro d’Italia and refound his peak Tour de France form.

Juan Ayuso, Matteo Jorgenson, and Paul Seixas flexed their next-gen potential in the Auvergne-Rhônes-Alpes.

And while Isaac del Toro pledged his allegiance after he dominated the Dauphiné, there’s no harm in Pogačar delivering his domestique a timely reminder of the hierarchy.

Pogačar and his quest to complete cycling

Pogačar was an uncharacteristically subdued shade of dominant last month when he torched the Tour de Romandie.

Now he needs to broadcast a message: The Tour de France is his race, and his race only.

“We’ve had a good block of training done at altitude over the past few weeks,” he said Monday. “After watching our teammates racing and doing well at other races, we can’t wait to put our race numbers on and put that work into action.”

But the Tour de Suisse isn’t only a tune-up for King Pog.

It’s one of the few WorldTour stage races not yet on the palmarés of a 27-year-old outlier who’s already thinking about his legacy.

These twin motivations mean UAE Emirates-XRG is sending a Tour de France-caliber roster to support Pogačar in Switzerland.

Del Toro and Pavel Sivakov are the only riders missing from UAE’s expected Tour de France crew.

Pogačar to face-off with Van der Poel, Pidcock, Roglič in 5-day Suisse

Financial constraints have shrunk this year’s Tour de Suisse to just five days, running June 17-21.

The race will be won across a sprint stage, two hilly stages, a 24km ITT, and an extra-hard Alpine finale.

It should be easy picking for Pogačar.

He won’t need to worry about going too deep in a race this short.

Primož Roglič, Richard Carapaz, and Lenny Martinez are his only clear challengers for GC after so many decided to finesse their Tour de France form last week in the Dauphiné.

Mathieu van der Poel and Tom Pidcock will test Pogačar’s punch through the opening hilly stages in a rematch from the spring monuments.

Victory: How, not if?

A handful of stage wins and the overall seems an inevitability for Pogačar in his Tour de Suisse debut.

The biggest intrigue might be in how he does it.

The world champion admitted he was a touch overweight and off his best in April when he trounced the Tour de Romandie while riding zone 2.

Spy shots from Pogačar’s training camp on Sierra Nevada suggest he’ll parachute into Switzerland as a rider reborn.

Images from Spain and some timely rider gossip indicate he’s metamorphosed from the meaty monument rider who sparred with Van der Poel and Wout van Aert all spring.

For Pogačar, victory this week at the Tour de Suisse would bring a near-perfect season to an equally perfect peak before he strives to join the Tour de France five-time winner club in July.

Anything less than perfection will be an upset.