Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) will race for the final time before chasing a record-equalling fifth Tour de France yellow jersey at the Tour de Suisse this week.
Making his debut at the longstanding Swiss stage race is another example of Pogačar pursuing more races he hasn’t yet won, as he continues to almost completely dominate the WorldTour calendar.
Having just watched his lieutenant for the Tour, Isaac del Toro, take an assured victory in the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Pogačar will be the heavy favourite to do the same over five days of racing from Sondrio, Italy, to Villars-sur-Ollon.
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“Training has gone very well, both individually and as a team, and I’m arriving at the Tour de Suisse feeling strong and motivated. It’s my first time racing here, which makes it even more exciting,” said Pogačar on UAE’s website, having mostly been training in Sierra Nevada in Spain since winning the Tour de Romandie.
“We’ve had a good block of training done at altitude over the past few weeks, and after watching our teammates racing and doing well at other races, we can’t wait to put our race numbers on and put that work into action.”
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Up against the world champion in the fight for GC will be the likes of Slovenian compatriot Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Bahrain Victorious duo Antonio Tiberi and Lenny Martinez, and Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost).
It’s an alternate route to that taken by his main rival, Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), who dominated the Giro d’Italia as his final pre-Tour race, and by Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), who opted for a massive block of training instead of adding any more race days.
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His rivals aren’t expecting it to make much of a difference to the favourite status Pogačar has carried into most of the past few editions of the Tour. Even with lengthy periods out of racing, Pogačar always hits the ground running, with three of the four road stages and the time trial in Switzerland all looking like potential victory opportunities on paper.
Asked whether Pogačar has got it wrong by changing the formula he used last season before the Tour, Vingegaard’s teammate Wout van Aert said: “Hopefully, for us that’s true.”
“But I think Tadej is by far the guy I know that he’s the best in preparing himself through training. If you see how good he is in the classics with barely racing, yeah, I think they know what they do.”
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But just why has he made the change? Again, it goes back to his team wanting to keep him motivated, knowing that his form is never going to be the question mark. UAE-Team Emirates-XRG team principal and CEO Mauro Gianetti shed more light on the decision-making back in February.
“He’s a visionary. He wants to win. But he also wants to discover something, for example, this year, he changed the program, doing the Classics, Tour de Romandie and then Tour de Suisse,” Gianetti told Cyclingnews.
“He’s never done that before and he wants to take the challenge to see something different, and not every year repeat the same and the same, of course. Now, the main goal remains the Tour de France, but around this, to change and try to do something different is the most important.”
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