{"id":361122,"date":"2025-12-20T20:37:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T20:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/361122\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T20:37:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T20:37:15","slug":"roubaix-is-one-of-the-races-high-on-his-wish-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/361122\/","title":{"rendered":"Roubaix is one of the races high on his wish list"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paris-Roubaix<\/a> and Milano-Sanremo are the two monuments that Tadej Pogacar<\/a> hasn’t yet won in his career and are potentially the biggest goals he has remaining. UAE Team Emirates – XRG<\/a> will go all-out to win both and certainly has a strong team around him, including Tim Wellens<\/a> who is racing at his very best level.<\/p>\n

The veteran won the Belgian national championships earlier this summer, and then besides being Pogacar’s right-hand man at the Tour, he also won his very own stage from a breakaway in Carcassonne.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can wear that beautiful Belgian jersey every day in training, so it\u2019s been a magnificent year,\u201d Wellens said in words to In de Leiderstrui. \u201cNot much has changed, but I did realize how important it is to win a stage in the Tour de France. In that Belgian jersey. It\u2019s a completely different level, and I underestimated how important that was.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Wellens is a rider that has won a lot in the past, but perhaps his level of popularity was never as big as in this summer. \u201cI got home and I had the impression everyone knew me, which wasn\u2019t the case before,\u201d he explained. \u201cIn race kit, that is. People stop me in training for a photo and that was new. I think that mostly came from the Tour, especially for people who watch less cycling. For me, it\u2019s been a pleasant experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TimWellens<\/p>\n

Tim Wellens’ 2025 Tour de France was a standout moment in his career. @Sirotti<\/p>\n

Trip to Roubaix\u00a0Wellens is more of a hilly classics specialist, but he knows how to ride the cobbles and his closeness to Pogacar means that he will be a certain figure at next year’s Roubaix next to the World Champion. Only two weeks ago, the duo were amongst the four riders who made the trip to northern France to test material<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve already been testing and that was hugely educational: tires, bikes, we tested all kinds of things,” he shares. It is a necessary part of equipment testing, something which is key in a race where bikes go through more tension than perhaps any other race on the calendar. “We learned a lot from it, and it was necessary that we did it”.<\/p>\n

And Roubaix is a big goal, perhaps the biggest of them all even, taking into consideration how in his debut last year, Pogacar rode to second place, and a victory looked to be well within reach. \u201cTadej still wants to win many more races, but Roubaix is one of the races high on his wish list,” Wellens assures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paris-Roubaix and Milano-Sanremo are the two monuments that Tadej Pogacar hasn’t yet won in his career and are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,165754,85,6494,164013,19805],"class_list":{"0":"post-361122","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-paris-roubaix","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-tadej-pogacar","14":"tag-tim-wellens","15":"tag-uae-team-emirates-xrg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361122","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=361122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}