Well, the most important thing would be to wrap him in cotton and put him in a safe until training resumes for 2025, to make sure he stays healthy. Because, let’s face it, without him the team would be merely excellent, not superior. There is no doubt anymore, Pog is the best rider of this century, if not the GOAT (greatest of all time).
Cycling’s reigning GOAT, Eddy Merckx, has ceded the crown to the 26-year-old Slovenian, telling L’Equipe, “It is obvious that he is now above me. I already thought so a little deep down when I saw what he did on the last Tour de France but [after the world championship] there is no doubt.”
Merckx was the first rider to win those three races in the same year, in 1974, a feat that has been duplicated only by Stephen Roche, in 1987, and now Pogačar. It was the manner of the Slovenian’s world championship victory, with an attack of 100km, that, as “The Cannibal” said, removed any doubt about his place in the sport’s history.
So where does the newly crowned GOAT go from here? What new ground will he want to break to solidify his place in cycling’s Olympus? One possibility is to go for the true “Triple Crown” of cycling, winning the Giro, the Tour and the Vuelta a España in the same year, a feat that has never been accomplished. Pogačar has never been content to rest on his laurels. And having now accomplished the Giro-Tour-Worlds triple, he may want to do something that no one has ever done.
UAE Team Emirates may be open to that challenge, if for no other reason than only one team has ever accomplished that feat, their arch-rivals Visma–Lease a Bike, just last year. This would add spice to their rivalry and almost certainly entice Visma into sending their two-time Tour winner Jonas Vingegaard to the Vuelta, a race that deserves a more competitive field than it had this year.
Pogačar will also want to win at least two more Tours to join racing greats Merckx, Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain at five Tour yellow jersey victories. And why not go for a sixth?
These goals will be complicated by the return of Vingegaard and Visma from a year beset by crashes and illness. I hate to downgrade Pogačar’s accomplishments, but the fact is that the Vingegaard he defeated in the Tour by more than 6 minutes was a shadow of his best self, as he was returning to racing after a dreadful crash and had not raced competitively in nearly three months.
The six stages Pogačar won in the Tour illustrates both the level of his superiority and the level of his rivals. A healthy Vingegaard in top form, supported by a Visma–Lease a Bike at full strength, would be a different proposition and offer a far more competitive Tour next year and in the years to come.
UAE Team Emirates currently sits on top of the cycling world, leading UCI’s team rankings with 34849.6 points, ahead of Visma, with 19876.98 and Soudal–Quick Step, at 17111.97. The team has won a remarkable 77 races so far this year, with a record 20 different riders winning at least once. So what does such a team do to prepare for a new season?
The first thing is to make sure that it keeps as much of its super squad as possible. To that end, UAE has extended the contracts of 20 riders, including João Almeida, Juan Ayuso, Mikkel Bjerg, Isaac del Toro (until 2029!), Brandon McNulty, Marc Soler, Jay Vine and, of course, Pogačar (until 2027). All of the world champion’s Grand Tour support riders will be back for at least another year. March Hirschi (to Tudor Pro Cyling), Finn Fischer-Black (to Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe) and Diego Ulissi (to Astana Qazaqstan) have left, but they were not Grand Tour riders.
Having kept most of its stellar lineup, UAE has so far been relatively quiet on the demand side of the transfer market. It signed the 25-year-old Florian Vermeersch, a good one-day rider who finished second in the 2021 Paris-Roubaix, from Lotto Dstny. More significantly, the reigning Ecuadorian champion, Jhonatan Narváez – who must have impressed Pogačar when he beat him on stage 1 of this year’s Giro – joined the team from INEOS Grenadiers. Racing with the best rider and the best team in the world will no doubt make the 27-year-old Narváez a better rider, which should make UAE Team Emirates a better team. The beat goes on.
