On the morning of the World Championships, Tadej Pogačar struggled to get out of bed. His alarm went off and, like many of us do as the sun rises on a lazy Sunday, he snoozed it three times. The start of the biggest one-day race of the year was just a few hours away, but Pogačar, in his own words, was “all good, no stress.”
The Slovenian rider is not like the rest of the peloton. After his dominant performances in the Tour de France this summer, all eyes were on him to do something spectacular on Zurich’s challenging, undulating city-centre course which took in over 4000 metres of elevation gain. Some might have felt the pressure, some might have had a sleepless night wondering about how they would escape a bunch who would be watching every single pedal stroke they took, but Pogačar was all for a relaxed morning in his hotel room. He doesn’t listen to the noise around him.
Perhaps it’s a luxury he is afforded by virtue of his breathtaking, superior physical strength compared to his rivals. When he made his race-winning move with 100 kilometres still remaining, Pogačar said that he “didn’t know what really happened, it was a stupid attack, but I guess it worked in the end.” At the World Championships, the pinnacle of the sport, “stupid attacks” shouldn’t work. Riders should need to think about what they are doing. One hundred kilometres off the front should be too long. But Pogačar is continually dispelling everything we thought we knew about the world of professional bike racing.
Image: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com
“It was not the plan,” he grinned in his post-race press conference, resplendent in rainbows in a room filled with awe-struck journalists. “I was thinking: I’m putting one bullet to one knee and another bullet to another knee a couple of minutes later. But I was riding with my legs and my head, counting down the kilometres and trying not to go over the limit and I made it.”
He did add that that his Slovenian teammate, Jan Tratnik, had offered him a lifeline as he bridged across to the breakaway in his trademark, aggressive style.
“When I saw Jan in the front, I knew he was such a machine who could pull super strong and that's what he did. He gave me hope and motivation,” Pogačar stated. “When I caught the breakaway, I knew we had to get Jan to work immediately as Belgium was trying to close the move down really fast. Everyone knew what was going to happen when I joined the break with Jan. Everyone expected Jan to pull and I would attack.”
The problem for the rest of the peloton is that, as Pogačar says, they all know what he is going to do. An attack is always coming from the Slovenian rider, it’s obvious whenever he lines up on the start line of a bike race. Yet they can simply do nothing about it. Pogačar doesn’t need to wake up on time, he doesn’t need to think, he can do “stupid” things but he can still win. Even as the time gap teetered dangerously close to half a minute in the closing kilometres of the race, Pogačar didn’t panic. He never does.
“I had quite good information on the time gaps and in this kind of racing, after 240 kilometres, guys at the back are also tired, so 35 seconds is not such a small gap,” he stated after the race. “You expect and hope that there is no real work in the back group and in the World Champs when everyone is so tired, there’s a big chance that there isn’t big cooperation behind. But it was still really hard as I was empty. I was looking with my eyes crossed a bit and I couldn't even stand on the pedals anymore, I couldn't stand up.”
Image: Zac Williams/SWpix.com
If it was anyone else who had Pogačar’s repeated ability to ride away from a peloton of world-class bike riders with seemingly effortless panache, they may suffer the consequences of a jaded public getting bored of watching them win. It doesn’t seem, however, that the newly-crowned world champion is heading into that territory. Is it because, in some ways, he’s just like us? The guy who snoozes his alarm three times in the morning because he can’t be bothered to get out of bed?
It also helps that Pogačar’s reaction to his victory today was genuinely heartfelt. Even after the three Tour de France victories, the 17 stage wins and conquering three out of the five Monuments, it still means something to the Slovenian rider when he stands on the top step of the podium.
“My emotions are like a rollercoaster right now,” he explained after the race. “It was a crazy last kilometre and then when I saw my teammates and Urška [Žigart, Pogačar’s fiancé] at the finish and did my interviews before, it was really nice emotions. I was really almost crying at every interview that I did.”
Pogačar spoke of racing as a child and thinking about the rainbow bands, something he’s hung on to ever since he started cycling.
“When we were kids, I didn’t even dare to dream of having this jersey, I just wanted to be on start line of the Tour de France and the World Championships. The last couple of years chasing the Tour, Giro, Flanders, all these races, the World Championships was always just another race,” Pogačar said. “I never really prepared for it but inside I always wanted to perform well and give everything I could. This year was a perfect opportunity with good parcours, I could prepare well and give it my all today. It's more than a dream come true.”
And, at the end of it all, after 275 kilometres of gruelling bike racing, over a third of which he did on his own, Pogačar still prioritises one thing. It’s the thing that makes him the loveable champion he is, the thing that makes him the ideal rider to be wearing the rainbow bands this year, the thing that made him start bike racing as a kid and the thing that has kept him winning ever since.
“I can’t wait to wear this jersey,” he grinned. “I just want to have fun in it.”
Cover image: Zac Williams/SWpix.com
