There are two sides to Tadej Pogačar’s utter domination in both one day and stage races this spring.
On one hand, there is total admiration for the way in which the Slovenian is not just winning races but annihilating them. Whether it’s his 80km escape at Strade Bianche or his complete supremacy at the Volta a Catalunya, it is a sequence of back-to-back historic, where-were-you moments.
The other side to the coin is one of a weary, tiring peloton, one that is defeated. They’re turning up to races, spot that he’s on the startlist, and wave goodbye to their chance of winning before they’ve even rolled out of the start town.
“I know people hate the defeatist attitude, but the race is for second now,” experienced pro George Bennett of Israel-PremierTech told Cycling Weekly before stage six of the Volta a Catalunya, a stage Pogačar went on to win, his third of the week.
“If he buggers off on [Coll de] Pradell [60km from the finish] then people will say, ‘OK, he’s gone, but we didn’t really care about him, we weren’t trying to beat him but the guy who is in front of us.’ It’s just the nature of it after getting a hammering in the mountain stages. You think, ‘well, what’s left?’”
Guillaume Martin of Cofidis said that Pogačar’s performances in northern Spain and Italy this March have been “really impressive” and that “you really feel that he is there and the rest of the bunch is somewhere else.
“For sure I cannot compete,” he went on, “and I don’t think any rider here can compete with him. Something happened in the last two years and the gap has increased further.
“I remember 2020, just after Covid, and I could still compete with these guys but they have grown up and I have stayed at my level. I have never seen anything like this in my career.
“Before I always used to ride races to win, but now to be perfectly honest I don’t see how it could be possible when you are racing against a rider like that.”
Catalunya has been a rare stage race in which Visma-Lease a Bike look like finishing outside of a podium spot, and one of their climbing domestiques, Attila Valter, commented that Pogačar “looks untouchable.”
He added: “So far in this race, if he wanted to, he could have had a chance to win in every stage. That’s pretty scary, but what can you do if someone is in their own league? He is one extra zone above us.”
The reason behind Pogačar’s superiority is easily explained, according to Bennett. “Everyone is doing everything they can: we’re all going to altitude, all riding fast bikes, all getting aero testing, all fuelling well, so it’s not that he works harder than us - there is no way - but he’s got better genes. It’s as simple as that.
“At some point someone gets ultimate genetics. It’s a lottery of evolution. I know some guys who have worked harder than me but they don’t have the genes to reach this level.
“Right now it’s the best I’ve ever seen him. For sure. Definitely. He's definitely better than last year already. I know he’s made some changes in the off season and he’s on a different level. He was already pretty good but now he’s very good.”
Valter concurred: “He is playing with us and the bunch. It’s true what [Mikel] Landa said: it’s not that he’s training more or doing anything better, but everyone lives from their own talent and he’s just way more talented than the rest of us.”
Thank God, both the peloton and the wider sport are saying, that he has got a rival who can not only match him but beat him - Jonas Vingegaard, a man who has also started the season in scintillating form. “Luckily there are two of them - if there was only one it would be even worse,” Frenchman Martin added.
“But the way they ride is that they want to win everything. I can understand that it can be a bit boring for the spectators, but we try everything to win as well. It’s just they don’t let us win anything.”
