Tadej Pogacar can win everything, but he too may not be a game for Paris-Roubaix
At the age of 26, Tadej Pogacar He already has a career at the renowned level. The Slovenian seems to win at will, attacking every time the soil inclines upwards and – in general – dropping everyone, even the most determined opposition.
It is not always a simple navigation: it was foiled by Matieu van der poel In Milan-San Remo, he went back from the overwhelming rough power of the Dutch engine of the Dutchman every time he tried to remove him. But he took revenge on the Tour of Flanders, wearing an elite group down – included Van der Poel – through a series of friction attacks, before hitting the killer blow on the final climb of the 269 km race. The couple meets on Sunday for the final episode in a compelling trilogy of the spring races, while they Fight for supremacy At the first three of the year Monuments.
Even a victory at the end of the ardenne Fiamminghe could have ended in a very different way, if there had been a more organized and busy pursuit. Pogacar is not invincible, but his aura of greatness precedes him. It is inevitably the favorite in each starting line.
That’s why his decision to run Paris-Roubaix This weekend is so fascinating. For the first time from perhaps the Tour de France In 2023, Pogacar reaches its own of Paris as a loser, a stranger for the title. During that tour, the team of the United Arab Emirates Emirates Rider was recovering from a fractured wrist in a bad accident at Liege-Bastogne-Riege, the fourth monument to the calendar and another that is preferred to win this season, which only took place nine weeks earlier. He still finished the second.
This time there is no injury to blame. For the first time for years, Pogacar is in its best form and is not yet the favorite for a race. Which is not a testimony of the superb form of Van der Poel, a total machine in the most difficult one -day races and the favorite to obtain a hat -trick of straight titles in the notorious Velodrome of Roubaix.
The combination of an incredible power by the Dutchman to force themselves to the infinite sections of pebbles that start their legs on the route and his abilities of handling of the bike-inflated from years of success as a ciccante-it pilot make a strong opponent. Pogacar, although it is not enchanted, is lower in both senses.
He showed he could manage the pebbles before, gaining time on his rivals on pavement In the fifth phase of the Tour de France of 2022 and winning three times on dirt road Roads of Tuscan dust in white streets. But Paris-Roubaix is a very different beast, with pebbles representing about a fifth of the 259 km route and that require both immense strength and total concentration.
It was a momentary sliding of concentration on a quick descent that saw Pogacar hit the deck in the white streets last month and go to collapse in the grass, losing ground Tom Pidcock. He continued to win, but had the advantage of a steep climb to launch his winning attack. Paris-Roubaix does not offer the same ground: only flat and fast pebbles, with a slope in Mons-en-pevele in which all his rivals are likely to point out all his moves. Those greatest and most heavy rivals – Van der Poel, Wout van aert, Mads Pedersen – have the advantage over these villages.
This is not to mention the threat of the rain, which is scheduled for Sunday. Paris-Roubaix in dry condition is arid and dusty; In the wet, pebbles become a slip-n-slide and the race becomes even more chaotic. Tadej Pogacar cannot control time.
Yet it is still pulling the rainbow strips and racing, challenging all the probability and conventional wisdom. In theory, Pogacar is no longer likely to crash into the “North Hell” than in any other place, but the brutal reputation of the race precedes it. The Slovenian went for a high -risk and high -level strategy. Her all -round striker and pure love for the game may not be suitable for a race that tends to reward patience and wait for the right time. But Pogacar did not show any aversion to snatch the regulation in the past; In fact it seems to savor it.
That accident of Strade Bianche will probably have given Team Mauro Gianetti Nightmares of the team of the United Arab Emirates, and the team hierarchy was eager to dissuade Pogacar from risking his Tour de France of the title defense and other goals for the season by facing Paris-Roubaix. But the call of pebbles proved to be clearly too strong for the world champion.
Perhaps the challenge of dealing with a rare race that should not win, the opportunity to go to increasingly high heights, to go even more to cement his name as one of the big ones, was also a draw. No reigning champion Tour de France led Paris-Roubaix from Greg Lemond in 1991. The American closed in 55th place, and it was a bad news also for his defense of the tour, when he finished seventh.
The last defense yellow jersey Winning Roubaix was a family name, Eddy MerckxIn 1973, and perhaps the only driver who hinders the fact that Pogacar is crowned the largest of all time. The probability are stacked against him, but this tends to be when he is at his brightest.
Paris-Roubaix starts at 10.10 (time of the United Kingdom) on Sunday 13 April. The television coverage starts at 10 on TNT Sports 1
