Will he, won’t he? It’s been the question on the lips of just about everyone in cycling in the past few months. Answer: he will – Tadej Pogačar will make his debut in Paris-Roubaix this April, attempting to win his fourth different Monument.
In early February, Pogačar and his UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammate Tim Wellens were spotted riding on the five-star cobbled sector of the Trouee d’Arenberg, a 2.3km stretch of pitfalls, mines, and traps. Convention has it that Tour de France winners, lightweights who zip up mountains, don’t risk injury on the brutal cobbles of northern France, where falling is part and parcel of the race. But Tadej Pogačar doesn’t follow tradition – he does things his way.
The Slovenian has always insisted he will partake in the Hell of the North one day – in his pursuit of superseding Eddy Merckx as the GOAT, he knows he will have to win all five Monuments – but he had never set a timeline on his participation. That recon, therefore, sent the cycling world into a frenzy. “He did a recon of the Tour of Flanders and he and Tim Wellens decided to do a bit of Roubaix too,” the team’s manager Matxin Fernández told Rouleur, explaining how the decision “was really easy”. “Half joking but half not, he said he likes it, it’s good, and we said: perfect, we’ll sit down and talk at UAE.”
A few days later, Pogačar was in the United Arab Emirates, preparing to win the UAE Tour for a third time. “The first day at UAE, we found ourselves sitting together at breakfast with the computer and he repeated to me: ‘I like Roubaix, what do you think if I try it this year?’” Fernández recounted. “I said to him: ‘Well, it seems good to me, because in October we said that this season you could try Roubaix’. In that case, we spoke about which race we would miss, maybe Gent-Wevelgem or E3 Saxo Classic, and he said he’d prefer to miss the two and instead train in this period for Flanders, Roubaix and then Amstel. The meeting lasted two minutes. We looked at the program and said: ‘OK, perfect’. It was so simple.”
Rouleur understands that Pogačar confirmed his participation in the race to a select group of friends in the following days, but it was decided to delay an announcement until after Strade Bianche and Milan-Sanremo. At Strade, the three-time Tour winner fell in the closing stages, somersaulting into thorn bushes before remounting and winning the race for a third time. Afterwards, his team’s general manager, Mauro Gianetti, admitted to the press that he’d prefer Pogačar not to compete in Roubaix this year, concerned that any potential crash could impact his preparation for the Tour de France in the summer.
But Fernández projected a different view, insisting that there was no reason to be any more apprehensive about the hazards of the race. “Are you scared if you’re at the front of Strade Bianche with two other riders? No, but he fell. Are you scared if you’re in the peloton at Liège-Bastogne-Liège that someone will fall in front of you? In theory no, but it happened [in 2023]. Are you scared if there’s 10 people in front of you? No, but it happened to Jonas [Vingegaard] last year. In cycling, you assume risk in every race you go to. The other day I asked him if we’re keeping the same program we set in UAE and he said: ‘yes, we’re keeping it’.”
Now that Pogačar’s presence is confirmed, the attention will be squarely on him. But it’s also true that in Wellens and Nils Politt, UAE have two riders with physiques more suited to the race. “It’s obvious that a race like Roubaix is very different to a normal race, and there’s a natural selection,” Fernández added. “It’s a very, very special race and in modern cycling, the more riders of the same team there are at the front, the more attacking the racing is, and that’s what we like. With Tadej, we’re going to be even stronger.”
A further recon of the route will follow between now and Pogačar’s first Sunday in Hell, giving more opportunities for the 26-year-old to become accustomed to the difficulties of the parcours. What does Fernández reckon: can his superstar tame the Roubaix cobbles and triumph on debut? “If I knew I was a fortune teller, I’d bet on the lottery!” he laughed. “What’s going to happen, I honestly don’t know, and that’s not me avoiding giving an answer – it’s the truth. He is assuming new challenges that are difficult for him and he’s going there to enjoy it. But a rider with the character of Tadej, I don’t have any doubt that he’ll be there competing in the race.”
