Tadej Poga\u010dar didn\u2019t land his initial sledgehammer attack on stage 1 of the Tour de Romandie, so he polished off his rivals in a sprint instead.<\/p>\n
The team UAE dominator outkicked Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious), and J\u00f8rgen Nordhagen (Visma-Lease a Bike) in a reduced sprint on Wednesday after his climbing attack \u2013 shock<\/em> \u2013 didn\u2019t deliver the damage.<\/p>\n After missing out in the opening prologue on Tuesday, the victory marks the first win of Poga\u010dar\u2019s career at the Swiss race.<\/p>\n The 27-year-old is debuting in Romandie this week looking to add a different line to his palmar\u00e8s \u2013 and it\u2019s going pretty well so far.<\/p>\n Bonuses at the line boost Poga\u010dar into the GC lead, 7 seconds ahead of future Tour de France rival Lipowitz.<\/p>\n Poga\u010dar was coy when asked at the finish whether he had hoped his climbing attack would be decisive.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t plan anything. But it\u2019s nice to take the win against the youngers,\u201d Poga\u010dar said at the finish.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a really nice race, but really quick. I\u2019m really happy with the sprint against these guys,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Poga\u010dar launched what could have been his hammerblow around 38km from the line Wednesday. The Slovenian superstar opened the turbos midway up the brutally steep climb that dominated the parcours.<\/p>\n However, Martinez wasn\u2019t going anywhere.<\/p>\n The Frenchman stuck with King Pog before Lipowitz came across ahead of the summit. Nordhagen bridged on the descent, and the stage hung on whether the four attackers could fend off a strong chase group.<\/p>\n Poga\u010dar was left to do the world champion\u2019s share of the work on the 20km drag race to the finish.<\/p>\n Martinez and Nordhagen did token turns, but Lipowitz wasn\u2019t pulling at all as Red Bull placed its bets on Primo\u017e Rogli\u010d finishing the job from the chasing group.<\/p>\n Poga\u010dar landed a subtle dig at his uncooperative rival in his finish line interview.<\/p>\n \u201cThe last 20km was a headwind and it would be stupid for me to try something,\u201d he said. \u201cI was happy to have two young eager guys to pull with me, they did a super good job.<\/p>\n \u201cWe managed to stay in front, which is difficult with only three and one guy sitting in the wheels.\u201d<\/p>\n Some wondered ahead of the race whether Poga\u010dar could win every stage of the mountainous Romandie race.<\/p>\n Poga\u010dar didn\u2019t rule out trying it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe saw it was on us all day today, and the team did a super good job, so I\u2019m super happy to take the yellow,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ll now try to defend it every stage. And the best form of defense is attack.\u201d<\/p>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/velo.outsideonline.com\/road\/road-racing\/tour-de-romandie-2-pogacar-tries-twice\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/velo-cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2273120581-scaled.jpg”] Jim Cotton Updated April 29, 2026 11:23AM Tadej Poga\u010dar didn\u2019t land his initial sledgehammer attack on stage 1 of the Tour de Romandie, so he polished off his rivals in a sprint instead. The team UAE dominator outkicked Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious), and J\u00f8rgen Nordhagen (Visma-Lease a Bike) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[226,71],"class_list":["post-1911470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-crawlmanager","tag-velo-outsideonline-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1911470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1911470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1911470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1911470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1911470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1911470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Poga\u010dar warns more is to come: \u2018The best form of defense is attack\u2019<\/h2>\n
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Results \u2013 Tour de Romandie stage 1:<\/h3>\n\n<\/div>\n