THE POG AND ROG EFFECT

The world-straddling dominance of Slovenia’s two cycling heroes, Primož Roglič and Tadej Pogačar, has pushed the sport’s popularity at home to new heights. But as Kate Wagner finds it has also served to divide the nation’s cycling fans right down the middle

- Kate Wagner

While it’s not Amsterdam, Ljubljana is certainly a cycling city. Bikes line the walls of cafes, are parked outside of shops and office buildings by the dozen, and the more hip cyclists often rush by on old Yugoslav-era beaters, ringing their bells on the city’s narrow, twisting streets.

But one of the newer sights these days are enthusiasts atop slick racing bikes, seeking a path to freer roads, often donning a Jumbo-Visma, Bahrain Victorious, or a UAE Team Emirates replica kit.

Up until recently, Slovenia was mostly known internationally as a nation gifted in winter sports, among them ski jumping and alpine skiing. But now, driven by the success of Primož Roglič and Tadej Pogačar, cycling gives those pastimes some stiff competition in terms of popularity, attention and media coverage. But, as Cycling Weekly finds out from fans and journalists in the country, those two poles have also served to pull the fanbase into two rival camps whose animosity wouldn’t be out of place at a local football derby.

The growth era

The headquarters at RTV is a compact, modernist mid-rise building crammed into the corner of a sunny street. I am shown around the studios and office spaces by Igor Tominec, a veteran radio journalist at RTV’s Channel Two, accompanied by the young, fresh-faced Matic Božič, who’s a bit of a Swiss Army knife in the Slovenian cycling sphere, working simultaneously at Val Radio, an RTV subsidiary, the Slovenian Cycling Federation, and also at Pogi Team.