In just three days of racing in the Vuelta a España, Tadej Pogačar has held the GC leader’s jersey from stage 1 and has the lead in the mountains and the points classification. He’s scored two victories – one each in a time trial, a difficult mountain stage, and took third place in a reduced bunch sprint. He has over three minutes on his closest rival in the GC standings.
By anybody’s standards, even his own almost absurdly high ones, Pogačar, and by extension UAE Team Emirates-XRG – who are also, unsurprisingly, the top squad in the teams classification – are operating in a league of their own at this year’s Vuelta a España. In the process, they are turning the Vuelta into a very different affair than is usual.
Not even the 2024 Giro d’Italia, where Pogačar ended up winning six stages and the overall, can compare to this scale of domination, and not just because two years ago in Italy, Pogačar was beaten on the first day in Turin in the sprint by Jhonatan Narvaéz and Max Schachmann. Although Pogačar had moved into the overall lead at Oropa’s summit finish the following day, his advantage on stage 4 was still a ‘mere’ (in other words, relatively normal for a Grand Tour) 46 seconds on Geraint Thomas.
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After an almost equal time period in the Vuelta – and this after the suspension of stage 3 because of the hailstorms – he has a 3:21 lead on his closest rival, Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe). Nobody needs reminding that Grand Tours are often won by far less, while in Pogačar’s case (see the Giro 2024 again) it’s often by far more. So this is a considerable advantage so early in the game.
Comparisons between the Vuelta and this year’s Tour de France are possible, of course, where Pogačar all but killed off any chance of the opposition toppling him from power, barring disaster, as early as the Col du Tourmalet on stage 6. By then, Pogačar had also won two stages and his time gap of 2:38 at the finish of stage 6 was more than respectable, if only a second slower than the 2:39 he carved out with his 50-kilometre breakaway to Andorra in the Vuelta.
Yet overall, his lead in July on Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) was a good 40 seconds less – 2:42 compared to his current advantage on Roglič in the Vuelta – and the Dane was still talking about beating Pogačar all the way through to the Alps. Right now, it’d be hard to find a dissenting voice from the opinion that all that has happened so far in this year’s Vuelta is what the vast majority of people thought before it started: that the race would be Pogačar’s to lose.
It is possible that Pogačar will opt to take a different path than Tony Rominger in 1994, the last rider to lead the Vuelta a España from beginning to end, and UAE might let a breakaway with a non-GC threat make a move on Wednesday’s stage 5 that ultimately takes the red jersey.
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It’s also possible that the sprinters’ teams will put a stop to that, as it’s their first chance for a full bunch sprint in this year’s race. There are mighty few of those in this year’s Vuelta. From then on, with multiple mountain stages piling up in the Vuelta – as usual – the chances that a move will manage to stick and give UAE and Pogačar something of a break from their leader’s duties will diminish with each day that goes by.
A far more recent sense of history repeating itself was already palpable at the finish line in Andorra, where Chris Froome was the last rider to take the Tour-Vuelta double back in 2017. The way Pogačar took the stage by the scruff of the neck – Felix Gall’s attempt to outpower him lasted all of 300 metres before he had to throw in the towel – marked an even more familiar, recent pattern in Pogačar’s wins in Grand Tours.
Even if the team and Pogačar are both rightly predicting caution, given it is almost ridiculously early to assume the GC battle is over, there’s no denying that this was pretty much how the Vuelta a España was expected to play out. Looking at the later goals in the season, there was always the sense that Pogačar would lay down the law early and then play it more conservatively in the second half of the race. Andorra was the most likely key place for part of that process to happen, and so it did.
In addition, the way that the chase all but shut down behind him on stage 4 very quickly suggests that when it comes to the idea of taking on the Slovenian in the GC, few are truly up for the task. The battle for the podium is, however, much more equal, while the return of names like Enric Mas (Movistar), as well as the ample confirmation that Roglič is fast overcoming his pre-race injuries, suggest there are plenty of actors wanting to stand next to Pogačar on the final podium in Granada. And this is likely the way the main narrative of the Vuelta will develop, even if Pogačar continues to go for more mountain top wins as and when he feels like it.
So if UAE and Pogačar are logically not taking anything for granted, barring a total upheaval on GC, the already very slim odds of anyone beating the Slovenian are now all but non-existent. It also means that the Vuelta, traditionally a race of comebacks and last-chance saloons, has become a much more predictable affair than usual. Even last year, given the scale of the outside protests affecting the Vuelta, Vingegaard’s status as top GC favourite was much less solid than Pogačar’s this August.
So what can we expect from now on? If the Tour and the Giro – where Vingegaard took an equally clear lead from early – are anything to go by, the battle for the podium is only just beginning, and the number of potential candidates remains encouragingly high.
Stage 6’s ascent of El Puerto de El Bartolo, with its gravel section near the summit, could prove to be the next real GC battle. But Pogačar’s position has now been more than clearly established, and the Vuelta could be where he sets the barrier even higher in terms of total domination in Grand Tours. Not even a three-week race which usually features so many twists and turns as the Vuelta may be able to avoid that – and Pogačar taking such an early advantage only underlines that fact.
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