{"id":346753,"date":"2025-12-14T04:23:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T04:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/346753\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T04:23:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T04:23:07","slug":"a-5th-tour-win-doesnt-excite-pogacar-as-much-as-paris-roubaix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/346753\/","title":{"rendered":"A 5th Tour win doesn’t excite Poga\u010dar as much as Paris-Roubaix"},"content":{"rendered":"

A stripped-down 2026 racing calendar sees Poga\u010dar confirming his passion for the monuments and is surprisingly light on stage racing.<\/p>\n

\"Pogacar\"<\/p>\n

Poga\u010dar is zeroing on on unfinished business in 2026. (Photo: Gruber Images\/Velo)<\/p>\n

Updated December 13, 2025 11:18AM<\/p>\n

Tadej Poga\u010dar<\/a> will be about unfinished business in 2026.<\/p>\n

Cycling\u2019s world No. 1 confirmed his racing program on Saturday with some interesting twists.<\/p>\n

Milan-San Remo<\/a> and Paris-Roubaix<\/a> will share top billing with a bid to equal the all-time record of five Tour de France<\/a> victories in a calendar designed to win big races and push the unstoppable Poga\u010dar deeper into the record books.<\/p>\n

Poga\u010dar\u2019s lean-and-mean calendar, unveiled at UAE\u2019s pre-season camp in Spain, doubles down on the monuments and the Tour in July, and wastes little time on unnecessary detours.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I would choose Roubaix over the Tour, because I already won the Tour four times. I think there is a bigger difference between zero and one than between four and five,\u201d Poga\u010dar told journalists. \u201cBut the record of five Tour wins matters to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year, there\u2019s no early-season obligation to race the UAE Tour, or anything else that doesn\u2019t tickle his fancy.<\/p>\n

In fact, the king of the peloton doesn\u2019t even start a stage race until the Tour de Romandie until after the classics campaign is over, and later at the Tour de Suisse, two of the few remaining WorldTour stage races that he hasn\u2019t started or won.<\/p>\n

From a season launch at Strade Bianche through the cobbles of northern France, the Slovenian\u2019s focus is completing the monument sweep, a feat that only three elite men \u2014 Rik Van Looy, Eddy Merckx, and Roger De Vlaeminck \u2014 have achieved.<\/p>\n

At 27, he\u2019s far from done, but only the biggest and most challenging races interest him now.<\/p>\n

La Primavera and the Hell of the North remain the only monuments missing from an otherwise historic palmar\u00e8s that already includes multiple victories at Tour of Flanders, Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge, and Il Lombardia.<\/p>\n

After close calls this year \u2014 with third at both San Remo and second at Roubaix \u2014 the resisting monuments move to the center of the agenda.<\/p>\n

Who can stop him? A record-tying fifth Tour seems inevitable
\n\"Pogacar\"A fifth yellow almost seems inevitable. (Photo: Gruber Images\/Velo)<\/p>\n

The Tour de France remains non-negotiable, however, with Poga\u010dar chasing a fifth yellow jersey that would equal him with Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, and Miguel Indurain.<\/p>\n

Poga\u010dar\u2019s trimmed-down calendar will see him go all-in on the classics. It\u2019s a style of racing that he thrives in and is growing to appreciate more than the day-in, day-out grind of the grand tours.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the classics, it\u2019s just one day. You go there, and everything is concentrated on that day, but it\u2019s not pressure like at the Tour,\u201d he told journalists Saturday in Spain. \u201cThe Tour is way more stressful. It\u2019s impossible to have the same amount of fun when you go deep every day on the bike. At the Tour, you work for 21 stages, and afterwards you can be happy with what you did.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other big news is that Mexican sensation Isaac del Toro will make his Tour debut, while Jo\u00e3o Almeida will target the Giro d\u2019Italia and Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a.<\/p>\n

The world championships in Montr\u00e9al also remain unconfirmed but on the radar, with a bid to win a third straight rainbow jersey all but in the cards.<\/p>\n

What remains as TBD is a tilt at the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a, the only grand tour missing from his r\u00e9sum\u00e9. Poga\u010dar acknowledged there are still a few boxes left to tick, even if that list is shrinking by the season.<\/p>\n

At this point in his once-in-a-generation career, he has nothing left to prove. What drives him now is racing on his own terms.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I ever win San Remo and Roubaix, I would think more or less that there is not much more you can do,\u201d Poga\u010dar said. \u201cThere are a lot of one-week races I have not won yet, and La Vuelta as well. The years are going really fast, and there is not so much time to try to win everything. The calendar in cycling is very big.\u201d<\/p>\n

For now, though, Poga\u010dar is putting the one-day races and a fifth yellow at the center of everything.<\/p>\n

The list of riders who can beat him is shrinking as fast as his career wish-list.<\/p>\n

Tadej Poga\u010dar confirmed 2026 schedule<\/p>\n

Strade Bianche, March 7
Milan-San Remo, March 21
Tour of Flanders, April 5
Paris-Roubaix, April 12
Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge, April 26
Tour de Romandie, April 28-May 3
Tour de Suisse, June 17-21
Tour de France, July 4-26<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A stripped-down 2026 racing calendar sees Poga\u010dar confirming his passion for the monuments and is surprisingly light on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,68224,85,116022,142212,172608,68380,78831,67883],"class_list":["post-346753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-parent_category-road","tag-sports","tag-tag-isaac-del-toro","tag-tag-milan-san-remo","tag-tag-paris-roubaix","tag-tag-tadej-pogacar","tag-tag-tour-de-france","tag-type-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}