A spectre is haunting the peloton, as the season transitions from the summer into its autumnal phase — the spectre of Tadej Pogačar, and his imminent return to racing.
In the seven-and-a-half weeks since the Slovenian last pinned a race number (on the final day of the Tour de France, when he sealed overall victory), there’s been a renewed sense of openness to the racing. Without the world’s best rider present to time and time again ride them off his wheel with grim predictability, suddenly the sky was the limit for other participants. Take the Vuelta a España, where all bets were off as to who would win, with the race situation and hierarchy changing almost daily. Even the riders further adrift weren’t settling for the best-of-the-rest spots behind an unassailable foe —they were riding for the win.
So many riders will have received the news that Pogačar will be back among them this week with a certain sense of dismay. Earlier this week he confirmed that he will participate in both this week’s Canadian WorldTour classics, the GP de Québec on Friday and GP de Montréal on Sunday. And he won’t be done then there, either, with the World Championships this month, before October’s Il Lombardia his final target of the season, which he will build towards in some of the preceding autumntime Italian Classics.
By way of an announcement, Pogačar took to Instagram. In his typically affable manner, he posted a montage of himself training captioned ‘Can’t wait for the Canada races’, in what felt like a good-natured warning shot to his rivals that, rested after his post-Tour break and hungry for more success, he means business. The video also set the online rumour mill spinning, too, due to a brief glimpse of his power meter. Amateur sleuths crunched the numbers, and most came to the conclusion that the numbers were frighteningly good, and we should expect to see a Pogačar every bit as strong as the one who conquered all during the spring and the summer.
Not that that should come as much of a surprise. Throughout his career Pogačar has never needed time to build up towards his top shape, and has the physical ability to retain his peak for multiple races a season, and this year that has been especially true. He started with a bang by winning Strade Bianche with a shattering solo attack over 80km from the finish, and continued in that vein the rest of the spring, dominating Volta a Catalunya with four stage wins and the overall victory, and triumphing at Liège-Bastogne-Liège in similarly dominant fashion. Then came the Giro d’Italia and his crushing overall victory there, and the way he managed to retain — if not better — his form to win the subsequent Tour de France and complete a historic double showed how even riding the two hardest races on the calendar back-to-back does not fatigue him.
It’s not just the biggest, primary season targets like the Giro and Tour that Pogačar has won; he also shows up for the smaller races he competes in, too, so we can expect him to be racing for the win in Canada. Of the two races, Montréal is the one he is best suited to, it’s hillier, more selective parcours playing to his strengths, as demonstrated by his victory here at his sole appearance to date in 2022. Québec is more of a challenge, as attackers often fail to stay away leaving the race often decided by a bunch sprint, but Pogačar can still pack a real punch in such a scenario even if he can’t go clear solo.
In terms of the opposition Pogačar will be up against in Canada, there are plenty of fast finishers who would fancy their chances of beating him in a sprint. After Pogačar, Biniam Girmay (Intermarché - Wanty) was one of the stars of the Tour de France, where he was the fastest sprinter at the race, and appears to be coming into some form again following a third-place finish at last weekend’s WorldTour Bemer Cyclassics meet. Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Dstny) is another in the mold of fast-finishing Classics specialist, and, though he finished a distant 21st in that race, showed enough form at the preceding Renewi Tour to suggest he could be a contender too. And as a one-time winner at Montréal and two-time winner at Québec (a race he has never failed to make the top five in any of his seven finishes), Michael Matthews (Jayco-Alula) demands to be treated as a major contender.
Pogačar will be the rider everyone looks out for to make an attack, but won’t be the only one trying to use the races’ many short hills to escape the peloton and win from a break. De Lie’s Lotto-Dstny teammate Max Van Gils had the honour of being one of the very select few riders not completely swept away by the Slovenian at Strade Bianche this year, where he finished third, and has since continued to be one of the most consistent performers in the Classics, with third at La Flèche Wallonne, fourth at Liège–Bastogne–Liège and seventh at Milan-Sanremo.
Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal–Quick-Step) is one of the few riders who, at least in his pomp, has been able to challenge Pogačar in the past, and looked closer to that level than he has done for a while when he placed second at San Sebastian last month. It was his French compatriot, Valentin Madouas (Groupama-FDJ), who most impressed at the Olympics, when he gave Remco Evenepoel a run for his money before eventually settling for the silver medal, with a performance that might boost his confidence before taking on Pogačar.
Alberto Bettiol (Astana Qazaqstan) is a rare rider in that, one his day, he can compete with any rider in the world; it’s just he only has these kinds of days sporadically. In terms of form, Stevie Williams’s (Israel-Premier Tech) recent win at the Tour of Britain outlines him as a contender, especially in light of his Flèche Wallonne triumph back in the spring. And maybe the biggest threat to a Pogačar victory comes from his own team? UAE Team Emirates have a very strong line-up featuring the likes of Juan Ayuso and Tim Wellens, and if they decide to ride tactically, these riders could break clear while their ostensible leader sits back and waits for the others to chase.
Still, if the rest of the season so far is anything to go by, and the speculation about the numbers he is putting out in training is anywhere near accurate, a Pogačar victory in both races remains the most likely outcome. Harder challenges are to come when the likes of Remco Evenepoel (Soudal–Quick-Step) and Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) take him on at the World Championships in Zurich, but he could send a serious warning statement to them and everyone else in these races this weekend.
