‘I finished last and I didn’t care’ - Pogacar’s road from Komenda to five Tours in new Colnago film

Tadej Pogačar finished last in his first road race and “didn’t care”, he says in a new Colnago documentary that traces his path from a Slovenian village to five Tour de France titles. The film goes back to his childhood in Komenda, with contributions from his family, his early coaches and his partner, Urška Žigart.

POG1 – The Making of a Legend, directed by Filippo Barcatta, premiered for free on Colnago’s YouTube channel on Friday. Pogačar also uses the film to talk about what life after cycling could look like.

He told the film that the riders around him are a big part of why he keeps going.

“My motivation these days is just going from race to race, enjoying the atmosphere with the team, going to training camps and races with friends. It’s a second family,” Pogačar said in the film.

Much of the documentary is set in Komenda, the village north of Ljubljana where he grew up.

“I trained there my whole life before moving around the world, and I had many friends there and all the family was close by. So it was really important to have a good childhood, and I think I had quite a good one,” he said.

He followed his older brother Tilen into the Rog Ljubljana club. His first road race did not hint at what was to come.

“The first time I raced on a road bike, I was quite a bit younger than everybody else. I finished last and I didn’t care, actually. I had a super fun time, and I think that’s the first time I fell in love with cycling,” he said.

Andrej Hauptman, who later coached him and now works for UAE Team Emirates-XRG, tells the film how he first noticed Pogačar at a children’s race in Ljubljana. Pogačar was by far the smallest rider in the race, and was about to lap the field.

He took bronze at the 2016 European junior road race. Even so, he said a professional career only felt realistic late in his junior years.

“I realised maybe only in my second year as a junior, and then the first year of under-23, that I could really go into the WorldTour and maybe race the biggest races. But I never imagined I could win a big race,” he said.

Žigart met him at a training camp in Istria in 2017. She remembers a shy teenager who turned out to be better at the sprint efforts than she was.

“I’m two years older than him. So at that point, I was looking at him as a kid. It took a while for me to see that, OK, he’s serious,” Žigart said.

Pogačar agreed a deal with UAE before winning the Tour de l’Avenir in 2018, and two years later he won the Tour de France itself. Commentary in the film notes that this made him the youngest winner of the race in 116 years.

He said the thought of eventually declining drives him as much as anything.

“In the back of my mind, I know this is not going to last very long. That drives me as well, to not reach that point where my shape goes down and one day I’m not as good as I am now. So I need to enjoy this moment while it lasts,” he said.