'I will be back, maybe not next year' – Tadej Pogačar defers history-making after second place at Paris-Roubaix

Tadej Pogačar has been in this situation before. Sitting cross-armed in front of the media, his bottom lip is lined with dry mud, his eyebrows bushy with dust. The first question in the press conference comes, and the world champion replies with eight words: “I feel good. I was happy with today.” The reporter, stumped by the brevity, follows up with another. “Are you not tired?” he asks. This time, Pogačar just shrugs and smiles – his weary eyes give as clear an answer as any words could.

The prophecy told that Tadej Pogačar would win Paris-Roubaix. For months, he was touted as the chosen one: the boy from Klanec – a leafy Slovenian village with one restaurant and a population fewer than 350 – who was destined to become the first rider since Roger De Vlaeminck in 1977 to win all five Monuments. He might still, but for now at least, his shot at history has been deferred.

Just half a second separated Pogačar from Monument immortality inside the Roubaix velodrome on Sunday. There was a roar from the crowd when he led Visma-Lease a Bike’s Wout van Aert into the concrete bowl, and another, louder roar when Van Aert kicked away from him round the final bend, to win by the length of his shadow.

Humble in defeat, Pogačar is quick to praise the rider he spent the last 50km alongside. “He [Van Aert] deserves the victory,” Pogačar says, and his brief, downbeat figure gives way to thoughtful reflection. “Every time I tried [to get rid of him], my legs were not the greatest anymore. I always saw him really riding on my wheel. He was so strong that I could feel it was just not meant to be today to drop him.”

Pogačar’s race truly began with 120km remaining. Victim of a puncture before the Arenberg Forest, he scrambled onto a Shimano neutral service bike, lost almost a minute to his rivals, but chased back to the front, swapping for a spare bike he took from the roof of his team car.

“Today was a lot of flat tyres,” he says bluntly. “First I was riding with a front tyre half flat, and then I broke the wheel on the back and I couldn’t ride anymore. I got the Shimano bike and it was big gaps across the groups.”

By the time Pogačar reached the Arenberg, he was feeling, in his words, “a little bit bananas”. He passed through the race’s most daunting unscathed, but his misfortune didn’t end there; a second puncture, and a third bike change, came with 72km to go, and he found himself in a dash to hold off his Classics rival Mathieu van der Poel, who ultimately wouldn’t claw back his own flat-tyred woes.

The stress of the efforts, it’s clear, took it out of the world champion. “Always when you have problems you waste a little bit of energy and it’s like this,” he says. “I don’t regret anything. It’s how this race goes.”

Was there anything he feels could have done differently? “There’s always something that you could do differently. Right now, so close after the race, I think I did all my best, but maybe tomorrow, after the dust settles, we will maybe analyse and see what I could have done better. I think in such a chaotic race, I did pretty good. I gave my best. No regrets, for sure.”

An hour after his press conference, Pogačar reemerged under the sun in the Roubaix velodrome to a ripple of applause. His face was now clean, thanks to a visit to the famous showers, and his clothes fresh from the team bus. He then sat down on the grassy infield, laughing with his family and friends, as he waited for the podium ceremony to begin.

The bitter aftermath of the result had vanished. No, it wasn’t meant to be this time, but there will be another chance, and another, for as long as his will allows.

“I think I will be back, maybe not next year, but I still have a few years of my career I hope,” he reassured the press. “I will try to come back and give it a go again.”

Already a winner of Milan-San Remo, the Tour of Flanders, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Il Lombardia, Pogačar's date with Roubaix destiny remains academic. His face may not appear on the Mount Rushmore of Monument winners just yet, but, after a second, closer runner-up place, there's a feeling his place in the granite is waiting.