Tadej Pogačar has announced his race schedule for the second half of the 2021 season, confirming his aim to defend his Tour de France title.
Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) has just started a two-week training camp in Sestriere, Italy before he returns to racing for the first time since winning Liège-Bastogne-Liège in the spring.
The main goal for the Slovenian is hardly surprising, aiming to defend his Tour de France 2020 title, having dramatically won the race on the final time trial last year.
But before heading to Brittany for the Grand Départ, Pogačar will go back to Slovenia where he will race at the Tour of Slovenia and the National Championships.
In a press release, Pogačar said: "I’m really excited to get back to racing. I have had a busy time since my last race at Liège but I feel good and ready to aim for my next targets.
"Last time I raced the Tour of Slovenia my team-mate [Diego] Ulissi won it so UAE [Team Emirates] are the defending champions. I’m pleased to go back there - it’s a race I’d dearly love to win."
The Tour of Slovenia is an event that Pogačar has raced numerous times before for both UAE Team Emirates and his former team Ljubljana-Gusto, but he has not yet won his home race whereas his main rival, Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) has won it twice.
The 22-year-old has also not yet won the national road race title of Slovenia but has won the time trial title twice. He'll be hoping to take the road race jersey away from Roglič in time for the Tour.
Pogačar then, of course, heads to the Tour where he will come up against Roglič again, as well as an in-form Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) and Nairo Quintana (Arkéa-Samsic), among others.
The final race on the list is the Olympics in Tokyo. The road race suits him perfectly with climbs that go part of the way up Mount Fuji. It is not yet known if he will also go for the time trial too.
Pogačar did not confirm if he will follow the Olympics with the Vuelta a España later in the year, a race in which he won three stages and finished third overall in 2019.
Tim Bonville-Ginn is one of Cycling Weekly's content writers for the web team responsible for writing stories on racing, tech, updating evergreen pages as well as the weekly email newsletter.
Bonville-Ginn started working in cycling journalism while still at school and university for a voluntary site based on Twitter before also doing slots for Eurosport's online web team and has been on location at the Tour de Yorkshire, Tour of Britain, UCI World Championships and various track events. He then joined the Cycling Weekly team in late February of 2020.
When not writing stories for the site, Bonville-Ginn doesn't really switch off his cycling side as he watches every race that is televised as well as being a rider himself and a regular user of the game Pro Cycling Manager.
He rides a Specialized Tarmac SL4 when out on his local roads back in West Yorkshire as well as in northern Hampshire with the hills and mountains being his preferred terrain.
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