SIDE STEPPING THE SOPHOMORE SLUMP

Last year Tadej Pogačar pulled off one of the most dramatic Tour de France wins in memory. But few have been able to back up their first victory. CW investigates if the Slovenian youngster can do the impossible – again

- James Shrubsall

There’s a story that UAE-Team Emirates DS and former Slovenian pro-Andrej Hauptmann like to tell about Tadej Pogacar. Hauptmann had attended a race and caught sight of a young lad trailing half a lap off the back of a pack of riders much older than him. Feeling for the youngster, he suggested to the race officials they end his misery and pull him out.

“You’ve got the wrong idea,” Hauptmann was told. “The kid’s not half a lap down – he’s half a lap up!”

Hauptmann, who was also the head coach for the Slovenian cycling team at that point, realized he was on to something.

“When I was his coach when he was a junior in the Ljubljana team, he was already special,” he said last week. “When someone is young, you cannot predict how far they can go. But that time, I already knew that he would be something really, really special.”

This weekend, that eager youngster will take the start line of the Tour de France in Brest on Saturday as the reigning champion and castiron favourite.

His UAE-Team Emirates outfit is even stronger than it was last year with the signing of Polish climber Rafal‚ Majka and Swiss rouleur Marc Hirschi. Equally the Jumbo-Visma squad of his main Tour contender and fellow Slovenian Primoz Roglic looks to have waned, with Steven Kruijswijk’s lack of form compounded by the loss of Tom Dumoulin. But such is the apparent strength of the 22-year-old Pogacar that you feel he could almost do it on his own anyway.

Peloton pressure