The night after the 2024 Volta a Catalunya had ended, a slight determine in a UAE Team Emirates tracksuit may very well be seen wandering alone by the departure lounge of Barcelona airport’s Terminal 1, his solely doable concession to anonymity some large earphones and an equally giant baseball cap to cowl his telltale quiff.
Having had hordes of followers chanting his identify only a few hours earlier after his devastating trip to victory in Barcelona – and, certainly, your complete biking world at his ft – right here, then, was a slightly totally different picture of Tadej Pogačar. With Volta already consigned to the previous, his aircraft trip to an altitude camp in southern Spain, his subsequent cease earlier than the Giro d’Italia, was already his subsequent goal. There was no VIP therapy, thoughts. No fast-track by the boarding queues, no seat possibility aside from economic system class on the low-budget flight, and definitely no tacky PA announcement by the pilot alongside the strains of “A particular welcome to the primary bike rider on this planet.’
For the following couple of hours, Pogačar went fully unnoticed by these round him. Then when the aircraft touched down, he simply grabbed his bag from the overhead lockers, turned for the door, and was gone. Just like anyone would.
You may argue that when it comes to logistics, it’s purely frequent sense that dictates that if Pogačar has to get from A to B and essentially the most sensible approach is to journey solo on a low-budget airline then so be it. Then once more, the times when Lance Armstrong would jet round from race to race in a non-public aircraft are nonetheless not thus far off in biking historical past. No matter, that lack of kid-gloves-treatment for his flight to an altitude camp was in step with how Pogačar and UAE have made their relationship operate through the years.
Pogačar might be all however in a league of his personal as a rider and UAE might properly have a few of the deepest pockets within the WorldTour, however slightly than make an extreme fuss about him – or certainly create a specifically designed ‘group Tadej’ to make sure his each want is attended to – the workers that work with him achieve this as only one a part of their regular roles inside the squad. And that, too, is intentional.
“This is UAE Team, not Pogi Team,” group supervisor Joxean Fernandez Matxin tells Cyclingnews. “In the sense that he’s the primary on this planet, we’d be the primary to say it and to worth him and to guard him and we’re very happy with him.
“But be it riders or workers, we strive to make sure that everyone issues and that no given soigneur, say, is extra necessary than one other soigneur. We cowl and work for one another, and to stay with the instance of the soigneurs for a second, it really works each methods.
“For instance, Tadej wouldn’t even be requested if he minded getting a therapeutic massage from one among them specifically. And he’d be equally high-quality with that. So in that sense, there isn’t a ‘Tadej Team.’ There’s simply UAE Team Emirates.”
Yet on the identical time, Matxin agrees that UAE Team Emirates are engaged in a unending quest to be as well-prepared as doable, an overarching technique that can as soon as once more come into play this May on the Giro d’Italia. And how that quest is structured, be it the broad brushstrokes of planning a season or the smallest query about which flight to get to a coaching camp, inevitably includes enter from their star GC rider.
Everything has to have a place to begin, too, and Matxin harks again to the winter of 2018-19, and a crunch assembly shortly after he had taken over as common supervisor.
“That yr we had the standard get-together to work out the rider programmes for the season,” he says. “At the time we had some excellent up-and-coming riders just like the Oliveira brothers, [Rui and Nuno] and Cristian Muñoz, however I can keep in mind mentioning to the sports activities administrators that we had additionally signed some champions of the calibre of Tadej, and Jasper Philipsen, too. What I stated was principally that we couldn’t simply deal with them as younger riders. We needed to deal with them like champions from the phrase go and alter their race programmes accordingly.
“So we introduced Tadej into some new races on the programme just like the Volta a Algarve and California, which he received, after which put him in Itzulia Basque Country – which he didn’t win, however he was working for Dan Martin, and he might need received it if he hadn’t been doing that.”
2019 additionally marked the second when Pogačar and the group concurrently stepped up a number of notches when it comes to his Grand Tour preparation, Matxin explains, bringing ahead his three-week debut to that yr’s Vuelta a España. And after a few weeks within the Vuelta, he was going so properly on GC that the preliminary thought of getting him ready till his third season to battle for a Grand Tour was quietly binned as properly. He would place third in Madrid.
“He had stated to me that yr that if he obtained to week two of the Vuelta and was actually drained, then he’d give up,” Matxin says. “But I sat him down and stated, ‘I contemplate you a champion and I don’t need you beginning a race considering you’ll abandon. I’d choose you to ease again on two or three levels for those who’re drained, after which maintain going proper the best way by.
“With Philipsen our method was totally different, as a result of as a sprinter it is unnecessary to proceed by the excessive mountains for those who’re drained and if you’ve carried out the primary two flatter weeks the place you may make issues rely. But with Tadej our technique was fully the alternative, he did the entire Vuelta.
“Then in 2020, when the conventional factor would have been to take him to the Vuelta or Giro d’Italia to battle for that, we raised the bar once more and put him within the Tour de France straightaway.”
Pogačar corroborated the concept he and his group raised their recreation in tandem in an interview with Emirati newspaper The National final Autumn.
“When I got here to the group 5 years in the past, we have been sitting in a single convention room in a lodge and the bosses have been saying, ‘We wish to be the very best group’, and at the moment, I believed it was unimaginable,” Pogačar informed the newspaper.
“But they believed we may do it. We labored in the direction of this purpose and achieved it fairly early. I noticed such an enchancment from yr to yr.”
In order to make sure that Team UAE didn’t change into ‘Team Pogi’ throughout that course of, Matxin says the group insisted on holding all workers members working throughout the board and never particularly with their star rider. At the identical time, that technique would hardly operate with out Pogačar’s personal buy-in, and his personal choice for being handled no otherwise to the remainder.
“He’s modified a bit since he got here on the group, however solely in the best way each 20-year-old modifications because the years go by. People develop up,” soigneur Joseba Elguezabal tells Cyclingnews.
“Essentially, he’s the identical man he ever was – the identical one that likes his jokes, who likes his meals and loves using his bikes, who is absolutely pleasant and who has a smile for everyone. He’s primary on the bike and off it, too.
“Equally, I don’t see any distinction between the best way he will get handled and the best way the remainder of the riders do. In the coaching camp, for instance, after we’re all in the identical lodge, no person will get a greater or worse deal. The factor is, we’re all rowing in the identical course, and from rider number one to rider quantity 30 at UAE Team Emirates, they’re all handled properly.”
As for who works with whom within the group and who will get to work with Pogačar, Matxin cites the instance of Pogačar’s ordinary mechanic. “It’s usually a query of logistics. For instance, take the mechanic. Rather than lugging his bike round from airport to airport, it is sensible for him to take care of that as a result of he lives seven kilometres away from Tadej,” he says.
“So it’s not a query of Tadej selecting one explicit mechanic for his private choice. It’s extra that this mechanic is absolutely good for everyone on the group and he occurs to dwell shut by.”
It was a equally natural course of when it got here to Andrej Hauptmann being the sports activities director. Along with Matxin, the Slovenian is normally behind the steering wheel within the lead group automotive in terms of Pogačar’s races.
“I first met Andrej a very long time in the past, again when he was with [Italian squad] Vini Calderola. Another of the the explanation why we requested him to come back on board was as a result of we had Tadej and Jan Polanc, each Slovenians on the group,” he explains.
This absence of particular therapy has a particular benefit, too, in terms of questions such because the changeover of group medic through the winter of 2023-24 for Pogačar through the winter. The Slovenian went from the direct steerage of Iñigo San Millan, now working each for UAE and a prime soccer group, to being supervised by one other physician, Spaniard Javier Sola, with San Millan taking a extra oblique position. What made the change smoother was that, as Sola explains, he’s dealing with a number of riders in UAE, not simply Pogačar.
“A change occurred, and this was it – there are 5 trainers within the group and it’s like he was simply one other rider, I obtained a name from Matxin, I obtained an inventory of riders to work with,” Sola informed Cyclingnews and El Pais over the winter.
“It’s an even bigger accountability, however I at all times do the very best I can, and we’ve got a very good group of medical doctors, and also you get plenty of help. So having that helps you keep calm.”
But that group effort doesn’t have an effect on, after all, his appreciation of what Pogačar can do on the bike.
“He’s the very best rider on this planet, a pressure of nature, and there’s not way more so as to add than that,” Sola stated.
“What actually struck me is how shortly he will get into prime situation. His [power] numbers are spectacular regardless, however when he’s educated for 4 weeks, then you definitely say to your self – Heck, he’s bettering approach quicker than the remainder.”
Part of that skill to profit extra from coaching than different riders, Sola says, is because of genetics. “He’s principally been touched with a magic wand, and he can assimilate every thing higher than different riders,” he says. “But his largest advantage, in any case, is that he enjoys all of it a lot, be it coaching or racing.”
Elguezabal is equally eloquent in terms of Pogačar’s distinctive muscular qualities from a soigneur’s viewpoint, though he struggles to outline their exact nature. “It’s one thing I’ve come throughout earlier than a little bit in different riders, however in his case it actually stands out. Only one other soigneur, although, would actually get what I’m getting at,” he says, earlier than doing his finest to elucidate the inexplicable for anyone however a fellow practitioner.
“The muscle teams of a climber, a sprinter, a Classics rider or a stage racer all differ from one another in refined methods. But Tadej is so distinctive that in terms of a therapeutic massage even his muscle groups are in a category of his personal.
“It’s not simply me that claims that. All the soigneurs on the UAE group give massages to all of the totally different riders after we’re at coaching camp, they usually’ve all observed the identical factor about Tadej. It’s simply spectacular.”
Elguezabal additionally cites Pogačar’s extraordinary powers of restoration as one among his many items as a racer: “I used to be giving him a therapeutic massage after Vallter within the Volta a Catalunya, a stage the place he’d attacked within the rain and gone solo to win, and in only a minute he was again to regular. It was simply staggering.”
Like everyone else Cyclingnews talks to at UAE about Pogačar’s working relationships along with his squad, Gorka Prieto, the group nutritionist since 2020, emphasises that one among Pogačar’s qualities is that regardless of his distinctive nature as a rider, he’s something however exceptionally demanding.
“Of all of the riders on the group, in terms of vitamin, I’d say he’s essentially the most simple of all,” he says. “There are some who’re approach fussier, those who insist on having white pasta on a regular basis and also you simply can’t persuade them in any other case. But Tadej is the exact opposite.
“You’ll inform him, ‘You’ve obtained to eat this’ and he’ll eat it. He significantly likes some sorts of sauce that our Italian chef makes with pasta. But in any case, he’s something however a complainer.”
This excessive flexibility in terms of meals is certainly a bonus for Pogačar in all kinds of how, however one particular instance, as Prieto explains, is that there was some important change in the previous few years concerning carbohydrate consumption.
“Riders’ carbohydrate consumption is way larger too,” he says. “Before they’d be on a most of 90 grams of carbohydrates per hour of train, now it’s 120 or 130.”
That determine is much more hanging provided that a number of years again, San Millan was already recommending that his riders improve their carbohydrate consumption to 80 grams per hour, up from a extra accepted norm of fifty. Nowadays, that consumption is even larger.
Quite aside from getting the carbs in, a serious a part of nutritionists’ work in bike groups is predicting how a lot riders might want to eat relying on their position in a race. “It’s not the identical sitting in the course of the bunch in comparison with for those who’re off the entrance,” as Prieto places it.
In flip, that raises the query of how a group nutritionist handles a rider like Pogačar when he has a predilection for, say, solo assaults at 80 kilometres from the end in Strade Bianche.
“It’s not an issue, he’s very clever and he is aware of that if he goes off the entrance at x kilometres from the road, he’s obtained to eat this a lot,” Prieto says.
“He’s been educated, for those who like, to know that if he goes at such-and-such a velocity, he has to eat that rather more, and if he’s sticking within the bunch, he must eat that a lot much less.”
Sometimes all of it goes awry, although, as occurred on the Col du Granon within the 2022 Tour de France, when Pogačar successfully misplaced the race due to a starvation flat. But evidently slightly than get overly hung up on that stage and its penalties, to evaluate from Prieto’s response, it was higher to search for options sooner or later.
“You remind him – eat, eat, eat. But on the finish of the day, generally due to the stress of a race, they don’t observe your directions to the letter,” he agrees.
“Trying to make sure they do could be very a lot as much as the administrators, we remind them continuously over the radios within the group automotive to remind the riders: And then there are stickers on the bike telling them the place they know the place the bidons will likely be handed out, the place the feeds will likely be, and that’s a approach of reminding them: eat, eat, eat.
“The stress you are feeling in any race and sure circumstances can at all times trigger a slip-up. But you be taught out of your errors and let’s simply hope it [the Col du Granon] doesn’t occur once more.”
While the dedication {and professional} curiosity of their riders’ success is palpable in all of the UAE group workers’s feedback, the cynical would possibly say that given the knock-on advantages of a group successful races, they’re certain to really feel that approach. However, a few years in the past, former longstanding top-level domestique turns sports activities director Charly Wegelius informed Cyclingnews that working for a frontrunner for lengthy spells of time, even when that chief is barely in a position to join on a human degree along with his teammates and workers, inevitably creates an emotional bond.
In the case of the affable Pogačar and his group, the bond is even perhaps better nonetheless, which absolutely advantages their willingness to work as a unit. For instance, when Pogačar is on the therapeutic massage desk, Elguezabal says he and the rider share every thing from musical tastes – Pogačar is one for rap, Elguezabal extra in favour of reggaeton – to impromptu language lessons in Euskera and Spanish, to lengthy discussions about their totally different hobbies, with the rider being an enormous fan of automobiles and the soigneur of horses.
When the Basque lately purchased an English thoroughbred, Pogačar even paid him a go to at dwelling to see the animal in query. The identify? Pogi. How may it have been the rest?
But Elguezabal has additionally had had multiple event to see how Pogačar reacts to victories, too, just like the one he’ll be looking for to seize within the Giro this May.
“He’s not overly emotional. If he wins, he’s happy, nevertheless it’s nothing extreme and if he loses, he doesn’t lose the plot, both,” he says. But as Eguezabal lately informed El País, he’ll at all times keep in mind the day that Pogačar gave him a heartfelt hug with out saying a phrase after one memorable triumph: “And that wasn’t in a Tour in any respect, perhaps as a result of he thought beforehand he may win these. It was when he received the Tour of Flanders.”
Pogačar eschewed the cobbles this yr in preparation for a tilt on the Giro-Tour double, which Matxin explains is being a goal this yr, slightly than another, for a number of causes.
“Firstly, it’s as a result of the Giro this yr is a bit much less robust, there are 11,000 metres much less of vertical climbing than final yr, and that’s 11,000 metres much less of tiredness, each psychological and bodily,” he says. “But above all, we’ve opted for the Giro-Tour double as a result of this yr there are nearly 5 weeks between the 2. Other years that complete has barely reached 4.
“On prime of that we’ve diminished the variety of race days previous to the Giro itself drastically. He’s carried out simply 4 totally different races so far this season, and solely a type of was a stage race [Catalunya], bringing the whole all the way down to 10 days.
“The final a part of the preparation for the Giro-Tour double has been an altitude camp till April 12, then Liege-Bastogne-Liege, earlier than going again dwelling till the Giro. After he does the Giro, he’ll have one week at dwelling once more after which return to altitude earlier than the Tour.”
Yet what’s hanging, too, is how Matxin’s emphasis when discussing going for the double could be very a lot about the way it works within the greater image of Pogačar and his relationship with UAE Team Emirates. Which once more, could be very a lot in keeping with the group’s insistence of seeing their star rider as a part of an even bigger operation, slightly than a stand-out determine who must be handled otherwise.
“We needed initially to attempt to do a Tour-Vuelta double, however the yr we needed to do it, he was drained after the Tour so that concept obtained scrapped,” Matxin explains. “But this yr, aged 25, we determined he was sturdy sufficient to strive for each Giro and Tour, and whereas he’s a rider who doesn’t simply wish to do it for its personal sake, we needed it to slot in his profession usually.
“So this isn’t simply taking place now as a result of he’s obtained a contract with us till 2027. We needed to do it now, this yr, as a result of though he can nonetheless enhance and evolve, even when it’s not an enormous quantity, that is the suitable second to do it.”
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