It’s long been clear that Tadej Pogačar is on a mission.
He wants to win more Tours de France, true, but he also wants more than that from the sport.
One of his big goals is to take all five monuments.
Thus far the modern day cannibal has notched up a record five consecutive victories in Il Lombardia, three editions of Liège-Bastogne-Liège and two of the Tour of Flanders.
Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix remain, and he’s utterly focused on ticking them off.
Last week La Gazzetta dello Sport journalist Ciro Scognamiglio spoke to Pogačar, and reported that his first race will likely be Strade Bianche on March 7.
Nothing is set in stone: Pogačar himself and UAE Emirates-XRG traditionally decide the race program in December, or even January. There’s time yet for official clarification, or a change in plans.
But if Strade Bianche is indeed his opening race, does that truly represent his best route to success in San Remo, and indeed Roubaix?
Probably not. And here’s why.
A formidable opponent
Mathieu van der Poel is by far the biggest obstacle to Pogačar’s dream duo of victories.
After all he’s frustrated his hopes in the past three editions of Milan San Remo.
In 2023 Van der Poel took La Primavera, springboarding clear off the back of a Pogačar attack and reaching the line 15 seconds clear. His Slovenian rival was fourth.
In 2024 the Alpecin-Deceuninck rider played the perfect team role, covering Pogačar’s huge surge at the top of the Poggio, marking him all the way down the descent, and then riding to set up teammate Jasper Philipsen for the victory.
And this year? He stuck with Pog on every attack, both on the Cipressa and then on the Poggio itself. Van der Poel won; a frustrated Pogačar was third, with Filippo Ganna separating them.
Weeks later Van der Poel was at it again, being the only rider able to stay with the UAE Emirates captain in what was his debut Paris-Roubaix, and then soloing to victory after Pogačar crashed.
In effect he’s been his scourge on those four days. And while he is not as good a rider as the four-time Tour de France champion, Van der Poel is perfectly suited to the relatively modest climbs of San Remo. Ditto for the flat, cobblestone-littered roads to Roubaix.
Those courses mean that Pogačar can’t play to his own strengths. There’s nothing as tough as the Kwaremont, where he has broken his rival before. And there’s certainly nothing like the Mur de Huy, where he ran riot this year in Flèche Wallonne.
He’ll just have to beat Van der Poel on his own terrain, and that’s why a new approach is needed.
It’s all about peaking
It’s true that Pogačar has a balancing act to pull off. He desperately wants to win those two classics, but he also has his eyes set on a record-equaling fifth Tour de France, and a third consecutive world championships title.
That may well be the reason Strade Bianche is being floated as his likely first event.
But is it the right approach if he’s also trying to win San Remo and Roubaix?
There’s an argument to be made that if he wants to beat Van der Poel, he has to fight fire with fire.
The Dutchman is in absolute peak condition for those two classics. This year he competed 16 times before San Remo; eight days of road competition, but also eight days of cyclocross between December 22 and the world championships on February 2.
That’s exactly double the racing days Pogačar clocked up by the time he started Milan San Remo.
And even though he would have trained hard, there is no way his buildup could compare to the focused high-intensity bursts Van der Poel clocked up his cross campaign.
Those plus his later road campaign put him in sizzling shape for San Remo.
In contrast Pogačar had just eight days of racing by that point, including a week spent at the largely flat UAE Tour. True, he was aggressive most days, and true, he did win overall, but the level of competition didn’t compare to what Van der Poel did.
If he wants to beat him, he too needs to be in prime shape for San Remo, and again for Roubaix.
Being at 90 percent just won’t cut it.
Time for change?
Back in 2019 and 2020 Pogačar had a very different racing program.
In the first of those years his season began at the Santos Tour Down Under. The-then 20 year old was eighth on a stage and 13th overall. He also lined out in the Cadel Evens Great Ocean Road Race, and went on to win the Volta ao Algarve.
He had 12 days of racing done by the time he hit Strade Bianche.
One year later he took a different approach, but also one with some big early competition. He rode, and won, the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, then took a stage and finished second overall in the UAE Tour.
That represented ten days of racing by the end of February. And while Covid-19 made a mess of the traditional calendar, there is precedent for Pogačar to race early and race well.
Indeed he did likewise in several other years since. In 2021, the season after his shock Tour win, he did 15 days of racing by mid-March.
In 2022 he racked up another 15 days of competition in the same period. In 2023 it was 13.
But since then he’s backed right off early on in the year. The thinking behind it in 2024 was to enable his Giro d’Italia/Tour de France double campaign.
Last year he did just those eight days of racing before San Remo, and then held a peak all the way to Liège. That’s five weeks in total; little wonder he was frazzled afterwards.
Next season could, and should, be different.
If Pogačar is truly serious about winning San Remo and Roubaix, why not forget the Ardennes this time around?
Instead, frontload his racing program with plenty of early events. Peak early, shift the end point to Roubaix, not Liège.
Do what Van der Poel does and focus everything on the cobbled classics, not those which follow.
Sure, he’d be passing up the chance for a fifth win in Liège. Sure, he’d miss out on another Flèche Wallonne success. That’s fine. Pogačar has said time and time again that he’s not interested in winning the same races multiple times. Instead he’s insisted he’d rather take a much wider variety of events.
So why not give everything in 2026 for those two Monuments still missing from his trophy cabinet?
Being a few percent sharper than he was this year could make all the difference against Van der Poel.
A new approach
Pogačar’s team will, of course, be worried about shaking things up too much.
Winning Liège is an easier ask than San Remo, or Roubaix.
The squad may also think back to the fatigue he showed in the third week of this year’s Tour, something his teammate Tim Wellens said recently was due to a knee problem, but which his agent Alex Carera told Velo in September was due to over-racing.
“For sure next year he deletes some races, because he rode too much,” Carera said then.
That’s fair enough. But the danger to his San Remo and Roubaix ambitions is that he deletes races early on, rather than after those two events.
Better he hits the early season hard, builds to top condition through good training and intense racing, and thus keeps pace with Van der Poel’s own pattern.
And then, post-Roubaix, he backs off. He recharges his batteries, he ensures he is fully fresh for his buildup to the Tour, and he has more in reserve if he decides to do the Vuelta too.
The payoff could be huge if he and his team are open to that different approach. San Remo success? A Roubaix riot? The Tour-Vuelta double?
They all sound like good reasons to shake things up, switch things around.
Getting outside his comfort zone
One last thing.
Winning aside, Pogačar has also said he gets a kick of taking on a different schedule. He’s made clear he isn’t interested in doing the same thing year after year. So why not get funky with that early season program?
He’s rumored to be interested in cyclo cross racing.
In fact there have been suggestions he will be an ambassador for that wing of the sport to be included in the winter Olympics.
Rather than just being a figurehead, why not contest some events?
Pogačar is a skillful rider. He did cross in the past. And getting reacquainted with mud could only be a boost to his bike handling when it comes to Roubaix.
Alternatively, why not go back to the Santos Tour Down Under, or make his career debut in the Tour of Oman?
Shaking up his program would give him scope to switch things around, keep things fresh, try something new.
And it might just pay off perfectly on the Via Roma, and in the hallowed velodrome of Roubaix.
Source URL: https://velo.outsideonline.com/road/road-racing/tadej-pogacar-win-milan-san-remo-roubaix/