Teams & Riders Tadej Pogačar discussion thread

[Lequack]

UAE backstage pass

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgeW_pCF5kU

 

[Red Rick]

I think 40" to Vingegaard and 1'20" to Evenepoel is a more reasonable upper-bound. My expectation is that he will be ready in the Tour (both legs and bike) and be at least 30" better than that.

I still don't see any convincing reason to believe it should be much over 45s for either Vingegaard or Pogacar, nor any reason why there should be a big gap between Pogacar and Vingegaard.

 

[Froome]

It looked like he was going to crash throughout the course. It was annoying hearing the commentators talk about how well he’s cornering then you see him fighting the bike the whole way. I’m not to worried about it, I think climbing he’ll be in great shape. Pog and Vingegaard should have a field day the last 3 days.

Road surface. It wasn't any problem with the bike on those corners.

 

[Lorzenz08]

Pogi said in the interview this morning. After the classic season he mostly focused on building his base for climbing and didnt spend much time on the TT. After the Dauphine he will work on it a bit.

View: https://youtu.be/xf5HLg7h_ew?si=304s4P8j4WYEoHqq

 

[Jan the Man]

Road surface. It wasn't any problem with the bike on those corners.

Yes agreed the road surface was probably the cause of that and it is the same for everyone.

If he was trying a new positions that would probably explain some of the time loss on the flat (I don't know if he was).

Anyhow I would not read too much into the TT.

If he is badly exposed on the climbs this weekend that would be more concernig I think.

 

[Rechtschreibfehler]

Pogi said in the interview this morning. After the classic season he mostly focused on building his base for climbing and didnt spend much time on the TT. After the Dauphine he will work on it a bit.

View: https://youtu.be/xf5HLg7h_ew?si=304s4P8j4WYEoHqq

He also says his initial feeling was now to go all in on the weekend, but they will now reduce it to maximum 1 day and he needs to relax if he loses time. So let's see if he can actually do this or if we'll see some (maybe futile) Pogi attacks all over the place.

 

[Brullnux]

I get the "he did a full spring and shouldn't be at his peak yet right now" argument.
But it's also what Savant12 said I believe. It's beginning to look more and more like he won a crapload of races despite his material and team. (Where 'material' is specifically regarding the TT bikes)

This is all very reactive. UAE over the past eighteen months have been a hilariously dominant team. They've come 1st, 1st, 6th, 1st, 2nd, 1st, 1st, and 2nd in this year's major stage races - with five different riders. They had three of the four best riders behind the three mutants at last year's Tour (before Ayuso DNFed). They dominated TTs last year, and were way beyond Visma (Bjerg was beating Affini at the Giro...).

Their cobbled team is okay, not exceptional; their hilly classics team is built around Pogacar (and succeeds). The depth on their GC roster is way better than Visma, and I don't think the Giro should blind us to this fact. Pogacar has never really won thanks to his team, but he's never been in a position to do that or where that's necessary.

 

[Cycling111]

Pogi said in the interview this morning. After the classic season he mostly focused on building his base for climbing and didnt spend much time on the TT. After the Dauphine he will work on it a bit.

View: https://youtu.be/xf5HLg7h_ew?si=304s4P8j4WYEoHqq

Sivakov posted an Instagram story showing Pogacar training on the time trial bike. The other day, images of Pogacar and Sola with the time trial bike. And Pogacar has posted stories about the traingin in time trial bike

He won't say the real reasons. No cyclist says that when something goes wrong.

 

[Extinction]

One thing I was thinking is that Pogacar might have more of an eye on the Vuelta than Vingegaard which would explain why you would come to the Dauphine a little undercooked. Froome is a good example of a rider whose performances at the Dauphine became progressively less impressive the more focus he put on achieving the Vuelta-Tour double culminating in 2017 when he was pretty bad at the Dauphine yet finally won the double.

But those explanations are always easy to make after we already know the result. The fact that this TT was so far off from the expectations should be worrysome. It reminds me of post ban Contador who always went into the Dauphine with all his fans predicting victory and once he got his butt smacked all the fans pretended that a later peak was just part of the plan. Right now none of us have enough insight to know if this TT will worry Pogacar or if he is just peaking later, but I certainly feel less onfident in him now than I did a day ago.

I think it's misguided to be so worried about a fourth place tt in this race. He's a very good tter, as fourth in the Dauphine tt demonstrates, but Remco may be the best ever in the discipline, whereas Jonas and Jorgenson are each fine tters, especially this time of year. Tadej is likely just warming up. He has shown no signs of a down turn in his career (and certainly not like what happened to Contador).

 

[Rechtschreibfehler]

Sivakov posted an Instagram story showing Pogacar training on the time trial bike. The other day, images of Pogacar and Sola with the time trial bike. And Pogacar has posted stories about the traingin in time trial bike

He won't say the real reasons. No cyclist says that when something goes wrong.

He did say though he did train on it, just not hard efforts and he will do that now before the Tour. So I don't see any deception here.

 

[meat puppet]

June: fans panic over one TT

July: pogo cruises to tdf victory with a 9min margin and 1 w/kg cushion of safety

 

[Cycling111]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1932989902968299784

View: https://x.com/tomdanielson/status/1932989902968299784?t=LECHDyC8Yw3ia-gj7LjfVQ&s=19

 

[2WpK]

Pogi said in the interview this morning. After the classic season he mostly focused on building his base for climbing and didnt spend much time on the TT. After the Dauphine he will work on it a bit.

View: https://youtu.be/xf5HLg7h_ew?si=304s4P8j4WYEoHqq

Fascinating interview. He was clearly uncomfortable and hoped he could leave after his first answer but the questions kept coming. To hear him try to spin 4th place as a good result is kinda sad. However, I see no reason to doubt his explanations about what happened. They (UAE analysis) confirm that he lost time on the flats but the climb was good. He is under-cooked for proper TT efforts and feels he has time to work on this before the Tour. There was also a pretty strong headwind which favors more aero riders.(per Remco interview at end of stage). I don't think he was sandbagging but things were definitely off. He almost forgot to start his head unit and did it very late. And taking a drink towards the top of the climb was strange.

Going forward, he has some restraints on how much effort to make this weekend which to me = structured training vs going all out to win a race. I suspect he is just going to ride to not lose time in the mountains for 2 stages but go nuclear on one of them, probably Saturday. I am optimistic the Tour will be fine but my wife is a bit panicked right now.

 

[hayneplane]

If the form is in any way shaky then adding Majka as road captain will have a calming effect and help the tactical battle when not every question can be answered with dominant legs.

 

[rokovski]

Pogi sandbaging

 

[scribers]

This type of dolphinee would make Bruyneel very happy

 

[Mina.S]

Urska having a really good ride today so the altitude camp worked for someone.

 

[HashRouge]

The first ITT in the Tour is 33 kms. If they don't improve the setup Pog is risking 2 mins to Evenepoel there. I don't think that's a problem. The problem is that Jonas would put 60 secs on him.
Pog can have the best legs of his life but it wouldn't matter. If they put him on this junk TT bike again he will lose buckets of time.

I don't understand how the bike can be bad. Isn't it the same as last year, when he did great TTs in the Tour and Giro?

 

[scribers]

I'm no expert but I've seen it said the machine is new. And it at times looked like he was able to lose control of it like the bike itself was warping side to side.

 

[Jack_89]

The first ITT in the Tour is 33 kms. If they don't improve the setup Pog is risking 2 mins to Evenepoel there. I don't think that's a problem. The problem is that Jonas would put 60 secs on him.
Pog can have the best legs of his life but it wouldn't matter. If they put him on this junk TT bike again he will lose buckets of time.

I remember your apocalyptic comments after the Amstel Gold Race. Good omen again?

 

[yaco]

Urska having a really good ride today so the altitude camp worked for someone.

She usually performs well after an altitude camp. She actually did a decent descent by her standards.

 

[Rou]

I remember your apocalyptic comments after the Amstel Gold Race. Good omen again?

Yeah, maybe I'm overthinking it and Danielson is right and Pog is trolling Visma.

 

[Shortcut]

I believe Pogi could really use one year to take a break from TdF. Doing classics season without thinking about TdF or trying Giro-Vuelta would be really good for him.

 

[Rechtschreibfehler]

I believe Pogi could really use one year to take a break from TdF. Doing classics season without thinking about TdF or trying Giro-Vuelta would be really good for him.

I wonder if his contract even allows for this. The Tour is sooooo much larger than anything else in cycling and they will want to have their pretty well paid star there. I agree though, his comment he other day that unfortunately he has to do it every year clearly indicates he'd like to skip it some time. Maybe they will let him if he get's to 5.

 

[Shortcut]

I wonder if his contract even allows for this. The Tour is sooooo much larger than anything else in cycling and they will want to have their pretty well paid star there. I agree though, his comment he other day that unfortunately he has to do it every year clearly indicates he'd like to skip it some time. Maybe they will let him if he get's to 5.

Yes you are right, it is probably in his contract. They (UAE) also can't win any important race (5 monuments, 3 GTs or WC/OG) without Pogi (at least last 6 years they couldn't).