The finishing touches to Tadej Pogačar’s Tour de France preparation are up in the air, with the four-time winner putting his final altitude training camp on hold.
Pogačar had been set to join his teammates at Isola 2000 in the southern French Alps following his victory at the Tour de Suisse, but he has returned home to Monaco.
The UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider’s plans for this week are “still to be confirmed”, according to his squad.
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Pogačar elected to return home on Sunday in order to spend time with his partner Urška Žigart (AG Insurance-Soudal), who broke her jaw in a crash at the Tour de Suisse, where the women’s race was taking place at the same time as the men’s.
Pogačar was described as ‘shaken’ as he found out about the incident just ahead of starting stage 3, after which he went straight to the hospital.
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Now, he would appear set to forgo the plans to spend this week in Isola 2000, where he’d been set to have a final boost of altitude along with training alongside key teammates including Isaac del Toro.
“I changed a lot of plans in the last two weeks,” Pogačar said after the Tour de Suisse.
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“Now that Urška is recovering, her plans collapsed, my second plan collapsed, and now it’s the third plan and maybe in two days it will be plan four.
“The most important thing is that we stay together the next few days and we see how it is.”
Pogačar was only due to complete a short stint at altitude in Isola 2000, as a final ‘top-up’ ahead of the Tour. Most riders will travel to Barcelona on June 30 ahead of the opening stage on July 4.
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Some riders also use this period as an opportunity to recon certain mountain stages but given Isola 2000 is over three hours away from the nearest 2026 Tour de France mountain, that wasn’t part of his plans.
Isola 2000 is in fact nearer to Pogačar’s home, situated in the Alpes-Maritimes just over an hour north of the French Riviera. He could easily venture into the mountains for training efforts, but if he did stay at home at sea level he would miss out on the benefits of sleeping at altitude.
The question is how much Pogačar really needs that. A late visit to Isola 2000 has become something of a pre-Tour ritual for him, but he showed at the Tour de Suisse that he is in flying form, utterly dominating the race.
What’s more, professional cyclists are already stretched to their limits with the time they spend away from home and Pogačar, who finished last year’s Tour mentally drained, may feel like he’d over-burdening himself with another team camp at a time when his partner is recovering from a serious injury.
In 2022, Pogačar pulled out of Liège-Bastogne-Liège due to the death of Žigart’s mother.
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