Tadej Pogačar Cracked Before at the Tour de France. Rivals Won’t Get Another Chance.

Tadej Pogačar has a vise grip on the 2026 Tour de France and shows no signs of letting go.

The only hope at the Tour’s halfway point is a repeat of the Col du Granon crisis. That’s where Jonas Vingegaard and Jumbo-Visma famously broke Pogačar in 2022.

The rider who cracked in the Alps four years ago isn’t the same one wearing yellow today.

“Obviously, in 2022, even though we had the strongest rider, we still lost the race,” UAE sport manager Joxean Fernández Matxín told Velo. “From that moment on, we realized there were many things we had to improve.”

Inside UAE Emirates-XRG, Granon became the starting point for a complete overhaul.

That’s bad news for anyone else hoping to win this Tour.

‘Jonas made us better’

Back-to-back Tour victories in 2020 and 2021 made it look easy. Many expected Pogačar to rattle off five straight and then some.

Then Visma showed up and smashed them.

“I believe Tadej’s rivalry with Jonas has made him better. And it’s made us, as a team, better too,” Matxín said outside the UAE team bus. “That sporting rivalry with Visma has forced us to improve ourselves.”

The Granon collapse was a brutal wakeup call for Pogačar and everyone inside the UAE bus.

That winter the team reviewed every part of its program, from training and nutrition to recovery and equipment.

Changes they made then are playing out across this 2026 Tour, where the remade version of Pogačar and UAE are catching heat and even hearing boos for being too dominant.

“When you win a Tour with a very young rider, and then you win another one, you think it’s perhaps easier than it really is. You get carried away a little by the situation without fully thinking it through,” he said. “We realized there were many things we had to improve.”

UAE expanded its performance staff, overhauled nutrition, improved cooling strategies, strengthened the squad, and refined every part of Pogačar’s preparation.

Vingegaard won again in 2023 after Pogačar arrived undercooked following his Liège wrist fracture, but the changes were already in motion.

Pogačar says the biggest gains weren’t tactical

Pogačar is a wildly better rider than he was in 2022. This 2026 Tour is seeing Peak Pogačar.

“There are many factors that come into it,” Pogačar said when asked by Velo. “The biggest change since that final collapse is mainly in my physical capacity. I am better than I was then, and mentally I have also grown. I have gained experience.”

Since the start of 2024, he’s only been beaten head-to-head in one-day races like Paris-Roubaix. He hasn’t lost a stage race since the 2023 Tour.

“One of the biggest changes within the team has been in nutrition,” he said. “During this Tour de France, my body temperature is simply lower than it was in 2022 or in the Tours before that. There is more focus now.”

So far in the 2026 Tour, Pogačar already won three stages and packs a lead of 3:36 to Vingegaard.

With the Alps looming, it would take a major collapse like the Granon for the Slovenian to lose grip of yellow. The big question now has anyone else upped their game like UAE?

UAE rewrite superteam rulebook

UAE also doubled down around its leader and opened the checkbook to make sure Pogačar won’t be exposed again.

In 2022, Visma was a better and deeper team when Primož Roglič and Wout van Aert — both in their respective primes — helped attack and then turn the screws on Pogačar in the French Alps.

Now it’s almost impossible to isolate Pogačar.

Adam Yates and Brandon McNulty are top-shelf climbing domestiques, and Isaac del Toro would be leading GC on almost any other team. Nils Politt and Florian Vermeersch add brawn for the flats, and Tim Wellens and Felix Großschartner cover everything else.

“Jonas and Visma pushed us to our limit,” Matxín told Velo. “That’s the mindset we’re working with. We can’t relax. Just because we’re winning races doesn’t mean we’ll always keep winning.”

Coming the Tour’s final week, the memories of a Granon ambush remain the lone sliver of hope for every GC rival still standing.

Could Pogačar still lose the yellow jersey? Absolutely.

A crash, illness or simple bad luck can derail any Tour de France. Pogačar said he nearly hit a bidón in the feed zone the other day at 60kph.

But if everyone is waiting for another Granon, they’re chasing a version of Tadej Pogačar that no longer exists.