'He became much more serious' - Gianetti on the rivalry that forged today’s Pogacar
The Pogačar vs. Vingegaard rivalry has become the modern Tour de France’s organising principle. Different temperaments, the same obsession, and a scoreboard that now reads four Tours for Tadej Pogačar and two for Jonas Vingegaard. For Mauro Gianetti, the most revealing part is not the tally itself, but what the duel has done to the way Pogačar lives the job, he told Wielerflits.
Gianetti, UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s long time team manager, remembers the first meeting with Pogačar as something that felt immediate and unmistakable. “After he won the Tour de l’Avenir in 2018 without the support of a team, I met him for the first time at our service course in Milan, where we signed his first contract,” he said to Wielerflits. “You immediately noticed that this kid had charisma. He was open minded and incredibly hungry to learn as quickly as possible. He was only 19, but he knew exactly what he wanted.”
What separated him, in Gianetti’s eyes, was the calm. The appetite was obvious, but it came without noise. “That year we also spoke with guys like Brandon McNulty, Mikkel Bjerg, João Almeida and Marc Hirschi, who were also born in 1998,” he said.
“Tadej was much more mature. Much calmer, he didn’t need many words. He listened carefully and immediately saw the whole picture. He asked what he had to do to get better. Yes, I immediately realised this was someone special.”
Even then, Pogačar was not the finished product we now take for granted. “At that moment he was actually still a bit chubby. He weighed at least four kilograms more than now,” Gianetti said. “But on the long climbs he beat the best climbers of his age. We had expectations, but I could not dream that Tadej would become the rider he is now. Nobody expected that.”
Gianetti points to the penultimate day of the 2019 Vuelta a España as the first time his belief hardened into certainty, the day Pogačar attacked from distance and made elite riders look strangely powerless. “They indeed didn’t get a metre closer,” he said. “It’s that Movistar at one point chased full gas, otherwise Tadej would have won that Vuelta instead of Primož Roglič.”
Not long after came the moment the wider world caught up, La Planche des Belles Filles in 2020. “That day means a lot for his further career,” Gianetti said. “He believed it was possible to win the Tour. There was no must. We saw the chance. Must brings negative stress, believing in chances gives positive energy.”
The key, he insists, is that winning did not inflate him. “It didn’t change him,” Gianetti said. “It wasn’t like he suddenly felt like the king of the world. He didn’t buy a new Ferrari. The first thing he thought was that he wanted to prove the next year that he deserved the Tour win.”
But if victory did not reshape Pogačar, defeat did sharpen him. Asked directly whether losing two Tours to Vingegaard made him stronger, Gianetti’s answer was immediate. “I know that for one hundred percent,” he said.
“The second Tour he won in 2021 was so easy. He wasn’t forced to work harder, to improve. By those wins of Vingegaard, he was forced to add a little extra everywhere. He became much more serious in his approach. But that is logical. He is reaping the benefits now.”
That is the paradox at the heart of the rivalry. Vingegaard has not only challenged Pogačar on the road, he has helped define the version of Pogačar who now seems harder than ever to beat.
