{"id":558669,"date":"2026-04-30T12:18:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T12:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/558669\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T12:18:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T12:18:11","slug":"it-was-a-hard-transition-tadej-pogacar-climbs-his-first-mountain-of-2026-but-has-to-ride-within-himself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/558669\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It was a hard transition’ \u2013 Tadej Poga\u010dar climbs his first mountain of 2026 but has to ride within himself"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tadej Poga\u010dar<\/a> described a “hard transition” as he climbed his first mountain of 2026 on Wednesday, but the world champion didn’t show any signs of suffering on the opening road stage of the Tour de Romandie<\/a>. In fact, he rode well within himself, taking a victory built as much on brain power as leg power.<\/p>\n

Poga\u010dar had opted for a Classics-only start to the season, winning Strade Bianche, Milan-San Remo, the Tour of Flanders, and Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge, finishing runner-up in his only other race, Paris-Roubaix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The Tour de Romandie marks his first stage race of the campaign and, after the opening prologue, Wednesday’s stage marked the first long climb he has raced up since Il Lombardia last October, with the Ovrannax ascent providing a rude awakening at 8.7km and 9.7%.<\/p>\n

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“It was a little bit of a hard transition today, from short climbs to a long, steep climb, but I managed pretty well,” Poga\u010dar said.<\/p>\n

Victory on the day backed that up, and while it was hard-fought by the end, it saw Poga\u010dar forced to curb his efforts and his attacking instincts on the climb itself.<\/p>\n

When he attacked 4km from the summit, it looked like the same old story of an instantly-decisive attack and a long-range solo, but not only did the route descend into the valley, there was an extra 23km stretch along it, where a headwind was blowing.<\/p>\n

Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious) was the only rider who could follow Poga\u010dar at first, with Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) soon working his way across and Jorgen Nordhagen (Visma-Lease a Bike) making it a quartet in the valley.<\/p>\n

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“In the end, I was happy I had some company for after the climb because it was tough conditions to go so far from the finish with the headwind,” Poga\u010dar said.<\/p>\n

When asked if he was surprised by Martinez following him, he said: “A little bit. The first acceleration, I saw he was super good, so there was no sense to try and drop him because maybe I would explode myself also, and for the long section in the valley, I still needed good legs.<\/p>\n

“I was happy I decided to keep the pace good to the top. It was still full gas but not over the limit.”<\/p>\n

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So used to solo raids, Poga\u010dar found himself in a tricky tactical situation, with Lipowitz sandbagging due to the presence of his teammate Primo\u017e Rogli\u010d in the chase group, which hit the valley a minute down but thundered along it to come to within 15 seconds with a couple of kilometres to go.<\/p>\n

When Poga\u010dar’s willing allies, Martinez and Nordhagen, suddenly followed Lipowitz into the passenger seat at that very moment, it looked like the move would be for nothing, but Poga\u010dar shouldered the responsibility in keeping the pace just high enough, and still took out the sprint in convincing fashion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I was happy to have two young, eager guys to pull with me; they did a super good job, they were super strong,” Poga\u010dar said of Martinez and Nordhagen. “We managed to stay in front, which is difficult with only three, and one guy sitting in the wheels, so we can be proud, all of us who were in front.”<\/p>\n

Poga\u010dar finds himself in the familiar colour of yellow as the leader of the Tour de Romandie, with a few more mountains to climb. He voiced confidence in his teammates to control the race but gave an indication as to what we can expect from him in the later stages: “The best defence is to attack.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tadej Poga\u010dar described a “hard transition” as he climbed his first mountain of 2026 on Wednesday, but the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-558669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}