At the age of 26, Tadej Pogacar already has a Hall of Fame-level career. The Slovenian seems to win at will, attacking anytime the terrain slopes upwards and – generally speaking – dropping everyone, even the most determined opposition.
It isn’t always plain sailing: he was foiled by Mathieu van der Poel at Milan-San Remo, pegged back by the overwhelming raw power of the Dutchman’s engine every time he tried to distance him. But he got his revenge at the Tour of Flanders, wearing an elite group down – including Van der Poel – through a series of attritional attacks, before striking the killer blow on the final climb of the 269km race. The pair reconvene on Sunday for the final episode in an engrossing trilogy of spring races, as they fight for supremacy at the first three of the year’s Monuments.
Even an ultimately dominant win in the Flemish Ardennes could have ended very differently, had there been a more organised and committed chase. Pogacar is not invincible, but his aura of greatness precedes him. He is inevitably the favourite on every startline.
Which is why his decision to race Paris-Roubaix this weekend is so fascinating. For the first time since perhaps the Tour de France in 2023, Pogacar arrives in Compiegne outside Paris as an underdog, an outsider for the title. At that Tour, the UAE Team Emirates rider was recovering from a fractured wrist in a bad crash at Liege-Bastogne-Liege, the fourth Monument on the calendar and another one he is favourite to win this season, which took place just nine weeks before. He still finished second.
This time around there is no injury to blame. For the first time in years, Pogacar is in his best form and still isn’t the favourite for a race. That he isn’t is a testament to the superb form of Van der Poel, an utter machine in the hardest one-day races and the out-and-out favourite to secure a straight hat-trick of titles in the infamous Roubaix velodrome.
The Dutchman’s combination of incredible power to force himself over the endless sections of leg-sapping cobbles on the route, and his bike-handling skills – honed through years of success as a cyclo-cross rider – make him a fierce opponent. Pogacar, while no slouch himself, is inferior in both senses.
He has proved he can handle cobbles before, gaining time on his rivals on the pavé on the fifth stage of the 2022 Tour de France, and winning three times on the sterrato dust roads of Tuscany at Strade Bianche. But Paris-Roubaix is a very different beast, with cobbles making up around one-fifth of the 259km course, and requiring both immense strength and total concentration.
