‘A birthday party without the birthday boy’: Slovenia hosts its biggest cycling event without Tadej Pogacar

This weekend, that rise is supposed to be celebrated on home roads as Slovenia hosts the European Road Championships. The elite men’s race starts in Ljubljana, passes close to Pogačar’s home town of Komenda and was always likely to become a showcase for the country’s biggest star.

Instead, Pogačar will be watching.

His crash at the Vuelta a España ruled him out of defending his European title and left the organisers without the rider around whom much of the event had naturally been built.

“It is as if we are organising a birthday party and the birthday boy is not there,” race director Rok Lozej told Het Nieuwsblad.

Pogačar will hardly be absent from the weekend altogether. He has already been back on the roads around the course this week.

“He was riding the course on Wednesday,” Lozej said. “Of course he will be around somewhere this weekend, but he will not have a race number on his back.”

That image rather neatly sums up the situation facing Slovenia. Pogačar remains central to the story, even when he is not in the race.

His status at home now seems unquestionable, but it was not always that straightforward.

When Pogačar won his first Tour de France in 2020, he did so at the expense of Roglič, who had entered the penultimate stage in yellow and looked set to become Slovenia’s first Tour winner.

At the time, Roglič was already the established national hero. Pogačar was the young challenger who suddenly took the biggest prize away from him.

“He once divided Slovenia,” one Slovenian fan told Het Nieuwsblad. “Roglič was the hero at the time and Pogi was the young unknown. A lot of people blamed him for beating Roglič.”

The split went beyond cycling preferences.

“In my family, one half stopped speaking to the other,” he joked.

Lozej remembers the strange mood that followed. He was on the flight back from Paris with the Slovenian delegation after the Tour.

“The atmosphere? Like a gathering after a funeral,” he said. “There was some laughter, but it was not exactly heartfelt.”

Six years later, that tension has largely disappeared.

“Now we know better,” Lozej said. “Tadej is the best thing that could ever have happened to us.”

The change is not only explained by the scale of Pogačar’s success. His appeal at home is also tied to the sense that very little about him has changed despite everything he has won.

“He is everyone’s hero now,” the Slovenian fan said. “Not only because of his performances, but mainly because of who he has remained.”

That shift, from divisive young challenger to national icon, is one reason his absence this weekend feels so significant.

It also changes the sporting picture.

With Pogačar on the start line, much of the championship would almost certainly have revolved around the same question that follows him into most major one day races: how do you beat him?

Without him, the race opens up considerably.

Slovenia still has major names, led by Roglič, and there is an obvious irony in the situation. Six years after Pogačar took the Tour from him, Roglič again becomes one of the central figures for the home crowd because Pogačar is not there.

“We want to show that Slovenia also has riders ready to follow Tadej,” Lozej said. “And there is still Primož Roglič.”

The organisers can even find a small consolation in Pogačar’s absence.

“Without that crash, Tadej might have become world and European champion again,” Lozej added. “Now at least we are certain that the European champion’s jersey will actually be visible in the peloton next year.”

It is said with a smile, but it also points to a wider theme around the championships. Slovenia has spent years being defined by the extraordinary success of a handful of riders. This weekend offers a chance to show there is something broader behind that.

The achievements of Roglič, Pogačar and Matej Mohorič have made Slovenia one of the most recognisable countries in modern cycling. Hosting a major championship on home soil is another step in that development.

For Lozej, that is ultimately what matters most.

“We mainly want to prove that Slovenia can also organise a major event that does not take place in the snow,” he said. “If both the spectators and the riders experience a safe European Championship, we will be very satisfied.”

The winner on Sunday will matter, of course. But the larger test is whether Slovenia can present itself as a cycling country in its own right, rather than simply the home of one extraordinary generation.

That is what makes Pogačar’s absence both frustrating and revealing.

The race will still pass through roads closely linked to his story. The crowds will still be waiting. Europe’s best riders will still be fighting for a title he was supposed to defend.

Pogačar will be there somewhere.

Just not where everyone expected him to be.

The birthday boy is missing, but the party goes on.