It's the cycling winter. Time for presentations, unveiling of outfits, new team signings, and announcing intentions for a 2026 that looks as interesting as the previous years. And no one attracts more attention than Tadej Pogacar, the centerpiece of the UAE Team Emirates-XRG presentation in Benidorm and a roadmap towards his fifth Tour.
Matching the greats like Edy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Jacques Anquetil, or Miguel Indurain is not an obsession for the 27-year-old Slovenian. What motivates him is what he hasn't achieved yet. Conquering races that are considered off-limits. That's why, leading up to the French July (even though the Tour starts from Barcelona), Tadej has planned a calendar with significant and ambitious prior objectives. And he has left statements that are a clear declaration of intentions: "If I had to choose between racing the Tour de France or racing the Paris-Roubaix, I wouldn't know what to choose, they would be on the same level."
There won't be, as in 2023, a Giro-Tour double (at least not planned, because he joked with journalists: "I can't guarantee anything. I can always change my mind at any time") and it remains to be seen if he will attend the Vuelta a España in September ("Afterward, we'll see"). Pogacar will be present in the first four Monuments (Milan-San Remo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège). His challenge lies in the two races missing from his record: Milan-San Remo (March 21) and Paris-Roubaix (April 12). Not even the risk keeps him away from them: "In any race, you can have bad luck, fall, and not be able to race the next one. It can happen in Roubaix and you might miss the Tour, but it can also happen in a training camp and miss it just the same. We risk the Tour every day. You can't do anything to avoid it."
Tadej, who won't participate in the Tour of the United Arab Emirates as in other years, will start the season in Italy, at the Strade Bianche (just like in 2024), on March 7. After the Monuments, he will debut at the Tour de Romandie, from April 28 to May 3, before continuing the following month with the Tour de Suisse (June 17 to 21), already with an eye on the Tour. A Grande Boucle where Joao Almeida won't accompany him (he will be at the Giro) but Isaac del Toro will.