Teams & Riders Tadej Pogačar discussion thread

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Apr 21, 2025
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But I believe he is not that far from Pogacar and will close the gap until July. I have the impression the TTT will be very important.
This just seems like an absolutely bonkers take to me. A 19 year old who has never ridden a grand tour is not beating Pogacar at the Tour de France unless he is sick or crashes. It is amazing that he was able to follow Pogacar on La Redoute, but he dropped fairly quickly on Roche-aux-Faucons. The Tour is a different thing all together, with three weeks of racing and multiple hard, high mountain stages. I expect both Pogacar and Vingegaard to put considerable time into Seixas in the week three mountain stages if he does ride the Tour. There is a limit to how much an individual can improve in the space of one year, and Seixas has already spent considerable time at altitude this year, so I think what we are seeing his probably him at his current peak level. I don't expect that to change considerably between now and July.
 
Feb 20, 2026
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This just seems like an absolutely bonkers take to me. A 19 year old who has never ridden a grand tour is not beating Pogacar at the Tour de France unless he is sick or crashes. It is amazing that he was able to follow Pogacar on La Redoute, but he dropped fairly quickly on Roche-aux-Faucons. The Tour is a different thing all together, with three weeks of racing and multiple hard, high mountain stages. I expect both Pogacar and Vingegaard to put considerable time into Seixas in the week three mountain stages if he does ride the Tour. There is a limit to how much an individual can improve in the space of one year, and Seixas has already spent considerable time at altitude this year, so I think what we are seeing his probably him at his current peak level. I don't expect that to change considerably between now and July.
Seixas is showing he has no limits. Even GdL is in danger for Pogacar.
 
Jul 7, 2013
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Seixas is showing he has no limits. Even GdL is in danger for Pogacar.

This could also be Seixas' peak for this year. The kiddo spent 2-months (!) at the altitude before the season and this races block was clearly his target (while TdF wasn't even planned 100%). It's possible that they initially were thinking about the Vuelta as the main objective of the 2nd half of the season.
 
Feb 20, 2026
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This could also be Seixas' peak for this year. The kiddo spent 2-months (!) at the altitude before the season and this races block was clearly his target (while TdF wasn't even planned 100%). It's possible that they initially were thinking about the Vuelta as the main objective of the 2nd half of the season.
IIRC, he said he wants to race in Montreal so the TdF might be on his program a long time ago.
 
Feb 20, 2026
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Aug 13, 2024
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Sincere question: Why is Pogacar doing Romandie?

Other than "checking boxes" on the palmares, I see absolutely no gain from this for him and UAE.

Strange.
 
Aug 5, 2024
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They let the breakaway gain time even with Remco there. I thought the race was over but treated a break with Remco like a normal break.

I don't think they let the break ride. According to some riders in the peloton, they went full gas on the climbs and didn't close in on the lead group. So both groups were going full gas.
The reason Pog and UAE didn't panick, was because after Haussire there is a very long section of false flat downhill where UAE could drill it, and they knew the cooperation in the lead group would start to crack down after such a hard climb. Ofcourse, it takes a team like UAE to close that gap, all but 1 or 2 other teams would just fail to close it. So in that section they quickly got the last 2 minutes back. But it wasn't the plan to allow the lead group go from 30 seconds to 4 minutes. It just happened because the lead group went (too) hard towards Bastogne, but the simply didn't cooperate efficiently (I heard some riders in the lead group said that even towards Bastogne with the tail wind, the lead group wasn't riding very efficiently with some splits within the group happening from time to time and thus riders in that group chasing eachother.

ps: according to riders, the split happened and the crash with Izagirre happened after that. So the suggestions of the split being caused by a crash are simply not true.
 
Feb 20, 2026
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I don't think they let the break ride. According to some riders in the peloton, they went full gas on the climbs and didn't close in on the lead group. So both groups were going full gas.
The reason Pog and UAE didn't panick, was because after Haussire there is a very long section of false flat downhill where UAE could drill it, and they knew the cooperation in the lead group would start to crack down after such a hard climb. Ofcourse, it takes a team like UAE to close that gap, all but 1 or 2 other teams would just fail to close it. So in that section they quickly got the last 2 minutes back. But it wasn't the plan to allow the lead group go from 30 seconds to 4 minutes. It just happened because the lead group went (too) hard towards Bastogne, but the simply didn't cooperate efficiently (I heard some riders in the lead group said that even towards Bastogne with the tail wind, the lead group wasn't riding very efficiently with some splits within the group happening from time to time and thus riders in that group chasing eachother.

ps: according to riders, the split happened and the crash with Izagirre happened after that. So the suggestions of the split being caused by a crash are simply not true.
They were using only Laengen and Rune. If the were panicking Novak, Wellens would work early in the race.
This might hurt some cycling fans (specially Remco fans) but UAE just rode like they were chasing a normal break. In other words, they didn't give a damn about Remco. It's almost like they knew they could recover a lot of minutes in the hilly part of the race.
 
Aug 12, 2012
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Checking boxes. Do it once, and it's done. It's not like he had a busy schedule up until now
yes, for him this is like a training, and the landscape is good...Good place to start mesasuring how is now for long climbs, and to add this race to his palmares.

Anyway this is not the Giro he won, here there are riders as Lenny, Lipowitz, Roglic, Onley... who didnt ride Liege and he has to perform quite well.
 
Aug 5, 2024
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They were using only Laengen and Rune. If the were panicking Novak, Wellens would work early in the race.
This might hurt some cycling fans (specially Remco fans) but UAE just rode like they were chasing a normal break. In other words, they didn't give a damn about Remco. It's almost like they knew they could recover a lot of minutes in the hilly part of the race.
The reason why UAE rode it like they were chasing a normal break, is exactly the opposite:
They knew the break wouldn't cooperate exactly because riders like Remco (and Bernal) were in there.

If Remco / Bernal were absent, more riders in that break would have gone berserk and this kind of break would have been harder to control. Now the break controlled themselves at a certain point (who was voluntarily going to ride all-out, only to see Remco going clear...?). UAE used as many guys as they needed to control it. Ofcourse they weren't using Wellens, Sivakov,... too early. And they knew Decathlon would help if the gap wasn't closed somewhere before Wanne.
 

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