When the 2025 males’s racing season lastly will get underway, an enormous quantity of consideration will likely be positioned on Tadej Pogačar’s performances, victories and (maybe) defeats.
Pogačar’s UAE Team Emirates XRG can even be put to the check as soon as once more they usually have an terrible lot to stay as much as. Their technique for repeating their gorgeous 2024 season will likely be scrutinised and analysed earlier than and after each race.
UAE and Pogačar, solely have themselves responsible for such excessive expectations.
As probably the most prolifically profitable squad in males’s biking in 2024, UAE Team Emirates’ complete of 82 wins was effectively away from the 42 races received by their closest rivals Lidl-Trek and Soudal-QuickStep. Even with out Pogačar’s 25 wins, that is nonetheless an enormous lead on the opposite groups.
Furthermore, in 2024, UAE additionally triumphed with extra completely different riders – 20 – than any squad within the final 4 many years. Winning with 19 riders, once more excluding a sure Slovenian from the equation, would nonetheless be seven extra for final yr than their closest rivals in that class, Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, with 12.
For 2025, the UAE staff administration don’t have any intention in any way of taking their foot off the accelerator.
That may sound overly bold – however the best way the staff’s fortunes modified so dramatically in 2024 from a comparatively disappointing 2023 are recent sufficient of their reminiscence to ensure any lack of complacency. Secondly, UAE are effectively conscious from their very own earlier predicament with Pogacar within the 2023 Tour de France simply how nice a motivator for a few of their most harmful rivals a significant defeat will be.
One glorious means of sustaining staff motivation on a excessive is to make sure that all races, not simply those with Pogačar in them, are main targets.
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The UAE roster is stronger than ever in 2025. New signings embody Jhonatan Narváez, 19-year-old Spanish tremendous expertise Pablo Torres, Florian Vermeersch, Rune Herregodts and Julius Johansen. The solely main loss is Marc Hirschi, who moved to Tudor Pro Cycling.
“We know the Tour is rather more necessary, however there are not any small races for us,” Sports supervisor Joxean Fernández Matxin tells Cyclingnews.
Winning throughout the board
The means to unfold success tales throughout the staff shouldn’t be one thing new for UAE in 2024: in line with ProCyclingStats, UAE had the best variety of completely different winners of any WorldTour staff in 2022, with 16 and once more in 2023, with 17.
Play the ‘take away Tadej’ recreation once more with this quantity for final yr, by the way, and their 2024 complete of 19 winners nonetheless stays probably the most because the Italian super-squad Mapei, additionally with 19, means again in 2000.
“We’re not altering the game utterly, however it’s one other form of biking,” Matxin tells Cyclingnews. “It shouldn’t be the identical form of biking as, say, Sky nor [1990s Spanish powerhouse] Banesto.”
“It’s about producing an bold and victorious collective, and that is one thing I’m making an attempt to assist create. We’re not simply focussed on having one of the best rider on the planet. We rely on Tadej and we construct on that however we’re additionally fascinated with having a staff which is aggressive in all places on all fronts.”
“We know the Tour is rather more necessary, in fact we all know that. But for UAE, there are not any small races, all races matter from the primary to the final. So that concept of going to a race to coach for different races is one thing that does not occur with us – that is known as coaching and that is what you do at house.”
“Rather our mentality is to be aggressive from begin to end, and to not give something away to anyone.”
This ‘no items’ coverage is a far cry from the technique practised by Banesto within the Nineties the place Grand Tour phases had been typically tacitly awarded to rivals, easing chief Miguel Indurain’s pathway to the principle goal of total victory.
While Matxin says that UAE have left no stone unturned of their bid to up their recreation collectively in 2024, he says the staff’s core perspective to racing of ‘win the whole lot’ has remained unchanged.
“We’ve improved the whole lot, it doesn’t matter what place it has in our priorities: we have higher when it comes to aerodynamics, greatest observe, diet, coaching, planning, calendar, human relations…” he explains.
“But like the whole lot in life, the best way to enhance is realising the place you’ve got made errors, seeing what you may change, drawing your individual conclusions. It’s by no means a query of ‘copy/paste’ from different groups playbooks, and we do not wish to keep the identical both.”
“HTC for instance, received 85 races in a single yr” – the all-time modern-day file for a single squad in 2009. “But we have not bought quite a lot of sprinters, who possibly received HTC 60 of these victories. We bought 81 in 2024. Which goes to point out we have our personal, very well-defined system for successful, and it is one wherein we have managed to seek out house for 20 completely different riders to take their probability to win.”
Learning from defeat
So a lot for the previous, although, what concerning the future?
The 2025 season is but to begin, however Matxin says he and UAE are effectively conscious that defeats, just like the one two-time Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard skilled within the 2024 Tour de France, will be exceptionally motivating. That was the case for Pogačar, in any case, following his two years successful the Tour in 2020 and 2021, solely to lose to Vingegaard in 2022 and 2023.
But if there are parallels between the 2, Matxin shortly provides that the results of Vingegaard’s crash this April had been much more severe than Pogačar’s fall and damaged wrist in Liége two years in the past. That stated, he is satisfied the underlying precept of a setback sparking high riders’ urge to sit back tougher towards the percentages stays the identical.
“We’ve lived by our personal moments of understanding the way it feels when you are going to lose the Tour, even if you happen to’d gone in there hungry and decided to battle to the final. Of reaching some extent when you already know the race has gone and, equally, when you understand how a lot you wish to battle to get it once more.”
“Obviously, the results of the 2 crashes are under no circumstances comparable, even when our case was 15-20 days nearer to the Tour than Jonas’ in April. But for each, through the race itself there’ll have been a sense of uncertainty generated by these predicaments – a sense that hits you actually arduous.”
“You’re conscious, too, that through the countdown there’ll have been instances whenever you will not have been in a position to work and prepare however your rivals will. And the uncertainty of what that suggests is partly what drives you up the wall. But it is what drives you on as effectively.”
“So we all know that Vingegaard will likely be going by the an identical second to the one which we skilled. As a results of which, we all know we will not sleep on our laurels, that we will not take issues as a right. Tadej’s received three Tours, now, however if you wish to be within the battle and go for a fourth Tour then it’s important to deserve it.”
Discussing the staff’s motivation to maintain bettering, to not point out one in every of their key rivals, brings us neatly to the query of what Matxin feels is the best way to keep up Pogačar’s focus after such a profitable season.
His technique for the Slovenian varies very otherwise from the Tour champions of yesteryear like Indurain or more moderen ones like Chris Froome, who might need saved the Tour as their central purpose. In Pogačar’s case, Matxin argues, the extra selection, the higher.
“There are an increasing number of races for us to defend, however we’re not overly obsessive about that concept,” he says.
“If you have a look at his calendar with him, the overriding purpose is to maintain him motivated, and stimulated. And typically that stimulus means not doing the identical races time and again.”
“What does it matter if he wins one thing twice or if he wins it thrice?”, he asks rhetorically – and clearly excusing the highest prizes like Flanders or the Tour.
“Ok, there’s Il Lombardia, [which Pogacar has won four times in a row – Ed.] however it’s just about a stand-alone race at that time within the calendar, there’s not a lot else round. When it involves the remaining, we’re at all times in search of methods to maintain him motivated.”
“Of course, it is nice when it is a race he loves, like Strade Bianche, for instance. But we additionally know that if you are going to do Paris-Nice, you may’t do Strade the day earlier than. So one yr we modified all of it and he did Paris-Nice as an alternative.”
“Or have a look at the UAE Tour” – to which Pogacar will return this yr. “He’d received that twice so he modified to the Vuelta a Andalucia. The key factor is that they’re completely different races. And this yr we’re not taking a look at Paris-Roubaix, however sooner or later…”
The one space that has by no means come up, Matxin says, is mixing issues up even additional and placing Pogačar on the observe and, say, having a crack on the Hour Record. The Record was as soon as a revered aim for Tour de France champions like Indurain, Anquetil, Merckx and rather more lately, Bradley Wiggins. But as Matxin says, “with Pogačar, it is a completely different form of biking.”
“To inform you the reality, ever since I first met him in 2017, we have by no means as soon as talked about observe racing in any respect. Never. It’s not even come into dialog, neither from him, me nor even the staff.”
Back in yellow?
Regardless of what else he wins or tries to win, although, an enormous a part of whether or not Pogačar’s season is judged a hit will pivot on whether or not he is again in yellow in Paris on the night of July 27 or not.
Just so as to add additional depth to that pathway to a fourth Tour victory, it inevitably runs over the summit of the Ventoux and the Col de la Loze within the race’s third week, two challenges the place up to now Vingegaard has had the higher of Pogačar.
Matxin although is adamant that similar to the larger total defeats within the Tour can push riders to boost their recreation, “Anybody who is aware of Tadej will know that what occurred there in earlier years will give him an additional degree of motivation for this received.”
As for Vingegaard and if that previous information would function additional psychological gasoline to problem Pogačar, Matxin is extra cautious.
“I am unable to provide a particular opinion about him, as a result of I do not know him as an individual. But everyone knows that previous historical past would not win you races. It’s the current that does that.”
Furthermore, even when Vingegaard has already stated he is satisfied he can get again to some extent the place beating Pogačar is feasible, Matxin says that precedent exhibits that Pogačar is much from reaching his personal higher restrict.
“Every yr he is bought higher, and he’ll go on doing that. Sometimes it is 1%, typically it is 2%, however I’m nonetheless satisfied he is bought room for development.”
But simply as Vingegaard will symbolize a severe risk to Pogačar, Matxin underlines that Visma-Lease a Bike are removed from being out of the battle in the case of being one of the best staff of the season, both, in 2025.
“They have not let down their guard. In 2024, that they had a tough yr with quite a lot of crashes for his or her high names like Wout van Aert and Vingegaard, plus they’d misplaced one in every of their high riders, Primoz Roglič, to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.”
“Maybe we would nonetheless be leaders [in the team rankings] even if you happen to took out that issue, however you may’t ever inform a technique or one other. What’s sure is that if we take away Tadej from UAE’s efficiency in 2024, even with out him, we would nonetheless have been the primary staff on the planet, with probably the most wins.”
“That’s not to remove any benefit from what Tadej has performed for UAE, it would be arduous to try this with 25 wins and after being the world’s [top-ranked] #1 for 4 straight years.”
“But we wished to be sturdy as a collective past Tadej, too – and we have performed that.”