Such is Tadej Pogačar‘s success rate that nobody expects anything but victory these days – and since early 2024, there’s been little reason to change that particular mantra in cycling.
Back-to-back wins in three Grand Tours, two of them the Tour de France and one the Giro d’Italia, not to mention eight Monuments and two World Championships within that time span alone, do tend to have that effect. And when it comes to the Vuelta a España, even if he hasn’t tackled it since 2019, we are expecting an identical scenario of total domination along the roads of Monaco, France, Andorra and, finally, Spain this August and September.
However, given we’re looking at the toughest Vuelta route in recent history, with over 58,000 metres of elevation gain, nobody can take anything for granted, UAE Team Emirates-XRG head of performance Jeroen Swart warns. And that goes for Pogačar as much as for anyone else.
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On the plus side for Pogačar, Swart says, the key element for success at a relatively late point in the season, though, pivots on motivation, rather than straight physical strength, as might be more the case in, say, the Giro d’Italia.
In the case of the 27-year-old Slovenian star, there are plenty of reasons to want to fight hard for the right to wear la roja in the shadow of the Alhambra palace in Granada in just under a month’s time. But arguably even more to the point, Pogačar’s preparation and race program have been meticulously channelled throughout 2027 to ensure he’s in the ideal place, mentally, to do that.
That is why, Swart explains, whilst the training program since May was built for Pogačar to peak at the Tour, the race program was designed to try to keep the Slovenian fresh and keen to compete as deep into the season as possible. That’s not just in the late-season one-day races – as he has done plenty of times in previous years – but also, for the first time in his career, in late summer Grand Tour stage races like the Vuelta a España.
“His physical preparation was focused on July, as it should be, in that sense the Vuelta comes simply as an add-on,” Swart told Cyclingnews during the countdown to the Spanish Grand Tour.
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“It’s not necessarily something that would dictate the training prior to the Tour. But the race calendar was by design, it was always aimed at giving him the mental freshness to be able to do the Vuelta if he decided that he definitely wanted to do it, after he’d finished the Tour.”
“The calendar definitely took into account the potential of doing the Vuelta and would have been purposefully less arduous to keep him mentally fresh and interested.”
Pogačar’s previous experience of doing a double Grand Tour between the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France (winning both in 2024) proved very useful in what was and what wasn’t repeated between the Tour and Vuelta, Swart says.
On the one side, the goal between Paris on July 19 and Monaco on August 22 was simply recovering and maintaining form. But on the other, the option of taking on another altitude camp, in what would have been a repeat of what Pogačar did in 2024 at Isola 2000 after winning the Giro and before heading to the Tour, was not considered.
“There’s not a lot of time, so there’s not a lot you can do, it’s pretty straightforward,” Swart says. “But we omitted the altitude training.”
“It’s a cognitive effort to be away and do that, and we’re later in the year. When you talk about the transition from Giro to Tour, it’s still early, there’s more freshness. At this point in the season, you know you want him to be just recovering both mentally and physically. At a camp, there’s that mental effort required as well.”
Getting the job done
Ever since it moved to 1995 from its previous spring slot to September, the Vuelta has been a race where it’s often easy to perceive how among an often glittering start list of stars, there is a real mix between those present out of obligation, and those who are actually keen to compete.
Curiously enough, the previous five-time Tour de France winner, Miguel Indurain was a case in point. All but told by his team that he had to race the Vuelta in 1996, Indurain’s enthusiasm for taking part that summer in his home race was minimal and he ended up abandoning, prior to quitting the sport altogether at the end of the year.
Pogačar, on the other hand, is in a very different place to that and if he’s racing, it’s because he wants to. So we’re lightyears away from the Indurain scenario, or even the much less dramatic situation post-Tour for Pogačar in 2025 when he only opted out of racing the Vuelta for certain after he’d won in July.
But in any case, the mental side of things and simply wanting to be there, Swart agrees, is what matters the most when it comes to the Vuelta a España, and historically that’s as true for Pogačar as it is for anybody else.
“It definitely is. Tadej’s physical ability is unmatched, and so it’s important for him to stay motivated. And interested.”
When various reasons for that interest are put to Swart, like Pogačar not having won the Vuelta before, the fact that it would see him take the ‘triple crown’ of Grand Tours, and also “simply because he’s competitive and winning is what he likes”, Swart answers immediately .”Everything you’ve just said.”
“He last did the Vuelta in 2019, he hasn’t won it, winning would give him that triple crown and that’s definitely a big motivator as well.”
As for the fact it’s starting in Monaco, where Pogačar lives during the season, Swart says that he’s not aware that it was a factor that influenced the UAE leader’s decision to do it this year. “But,” as he adds, “it certainly helps.”
Then there’s the route. The format of the Vuelta, with major mountains early on on stage 4 in Andorra, is remarkably similar both to the Giro and the Tour in 2024, with a lot of high mountain stages in the first week, as well as the Tour in 2023, which went into the Pyrenees soon after the start in Bilbao.
Swart points out that the nature of the 2026 Vuelta route means it would be ideal for Pogačar to hit the ground running – and that’s something he’s done before to devastating effect in the three previous Grand Tours. But at the same time, he cautions that the extreme difficulty of the Vuelta is something that they’ve thought about and tried to factor in as well.
It’s not that UAE fear the toughness of the Vuelta could have a knock-on effect into 2027 (although interestingly, back in the day, racing so deep for so long into the autumn used to make the Vuelta a favoured option for Classics riders wanting a good base for the first half of the following one-day season). Rather, the idea that he could ease off a little in the third week with a view to being in top condition in the World Championships and above all, fresher, is definitely on the minds of the UAE management.
“This Vuelta is just full on all the way through,” Swart says. “In some ways, that is helpful because it’s decisive very soon and a GC lead can be built steadily and early on as well.
“But the Vuelta is going to be arduous, even for Tadej and especially after doing the Tour. It’s a hard and a long race.
“I don’t think it’ll have an effect on him going into 2027. Following the World Championships he’ll get to his end of the season, I’m sure and recover more than adequately so I don’t think it’s a concern, really.
“However, obviously, you have to see how the race unfolds, I’m sure if you’re looking at….starting with the TT and stage 4 already, it could be very decisive in terms of the GC.
“So I think it’s one of those situations where the second half of the race may be an opportunity to be a bit more conservative and then save himself for those other goals. That would be an intelligent way to do things. We’ll have to see how it unfolds, but that would definitely be a factor.”
From a purely scientific, performance point of view, the Vuelta is not, Swart says, one of excessive interest. As Swart sees it, the margin Pogačar needs to have on his rivals, given the the level of competition, is not as high, means this is a race with a very specific objective, and where the main goal is to sign off with the right result in Pogačar’s palmarès.
“I don’t think there’s going to be anything that’s a revelation,” Swart says. “I think Tadej has already proven that he can do two grand Tours, comfortably, in succession.
“Then if we look at his form at the Tour de France and the margin he had on his competitors, so naturally, the level of competition at the Vuelta will be a little bit below that of the Tour de France, and so I don’t necessarily think there’s anything that we’re looking for in terms of any spectacular revelation or performance.”
“Rather, I think it’s more a matter of getting the job done.” Which, given Pogačar’s track record, can only mean one result in four weeks time in Granada.
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