Nobody is immune to cycling's whims, not even Pogacar

For three seasons, Pogačar has been more or less invincible, conquering titles on all terrains, subduing pelotons in all conditions, winning races in every way imaginable and seemingly impervious to bad luck. Next race, next attack, next prize.

The beat continued at this Vuelta, where Pogačar made a fast start by seizing the red jersey on the opening night in Monaco and then crushing the field with a devastating solo raid in Andorra on stage 4.

The Vuelta hadn’t even reached Spain, but the outcome already seemed a formality. As if to make sure, Pogačar kept running up the score in the days that followed. Not for the first time, he was without rival or peer, and the Vuelta peloton had already explicitly accepted that he would not be denied the final prize. Best to let him get on with it and race for second.

But although there was no way Pogačar could be defeated by a rival at this Vuelta, every cyclist is vulnerable to the caprices of fortune and physics. Deep down, everybody who pins on a number knows the score. 

Pogačar had already endured a notable scare when he rode off the road on the descent of the Puerto El Bartolo on Thursday, but the crash that took him out of the Vuelta was one he couldn’t even have seen coming. 

Stage 8 had been the quietest of the Vuelta so far, the closest thing to a transitional stage in 2020s Grand Tours, with a bunch sprint a nailed-on certainty. There was no imminent danger for Pogačar, but risk is a constant, silent companion on the road.

32km from Xeraco, and just as the pace was ramping up ahead of the Puerto del Barx, there was a ripple on the left-hand side of the peloton and Pogačar was on the ground. In the moment, the cause of the crash wasn’t clear, but its effects were immediately self-evident. 

Pogačar’s pain was obvious as he clutched his bloodied left shoulder. With any other rider, an abandon would have been automatic after a fall like that. But Pogačar has been so untouchable these past three years that you struggled to believe he could really be stricken down by the kinds of crashes and broken bones that routinely affect the rest of the peloton’s mortals.

This was the man who bounced up off the tarmac to set a record time on the Cipressa and win Milan-Sanremo, after all. This was the man who kept coming back from a litany of misfortunes to go again at Paris-Roubaix.

Despite his agony, despite the concern of the medical team attending to him, you half expected Pogačar, in keeping with his almost cartoonish strength, simply to shake himself off like Popeye and cruise back up to the peloton. 

Indeed, Pogačar briefly seemed to believe as much himself. He attempted to remount and continue before his instincts were overtaken by pain. His entire UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad had waited to guide him back into the fray, but they now understood they would be setting off again without their leader.

Sports manager Matxín Joxean Fernández helped Pogačar towards the waiting ambulance, and he was driven away. This is how Pogačar’s Vuelta ends, not on the podium in Granada, but in a hospital ward in Gandia. 

The Vuelta waits for no man, but it certainly thought long and hard about it here. When news of Pogačar’s crash filtered through the peloton, the pace slowed dramatically. And even when word of his abandon reached them soon afterwards, there was a clear hesitation about precisely what to do next.

At the finish in Xeraco, Larry Warbasse (Tudor) summed up the ambiguity of the situation. For a week, the peloton had spoken with jaded resignation about Pogačar’s dominance. But now that their tormentor had been taken out like this, nobody quite knew how to react.

“We just heard that Pogačar went down, and then everyone kind of slowed down in the bunch,” Warbasse said. “We weren’t going too fast, everyone’s kind of waiting to hear. And then you just hear like, ‘He’s not moving.’ And then like another minute or two later, they’re like, ‘Okay, Pogačar’s out of the race.’ And then, to be honest, everyone was a bit sad actually.

“There was kind of like this heavy feeling in the bunch, which is kind of funny because obviously now the race is open, but I think everyone felt a bit bad. That’s not how you want him to be out of the race.”

The finale in Xeraco was a fraught one, with several riders coming down in a crash during the bunch sprint won by Bryan Coquard (Cofidis), but their injuries and the Frenchman’s victory were destined to be footnotes to the race-defining news of Pogačar’s abandon.

Pogačar’s UAE teammates, meanwhile, were still soft-pedalling together towards the finish line, stunned by the sudden departure of their leader. They had expected to dictate terms and conditions for the remainder of this Vuelta, and their shock was apparent as they drifted through the finish area. Most of them rode past the waiting media with thousand-yard stares, though Kevin Vermaerke slowed to apologise for being unable to put words on a day of disarray.

The talking was left to Matxín, who was surrounded by a phalanx of microphones and cameras outside the UAE bus. In victory and defeat, Matxín is always an effusive speaker, and he outlined his disappointment in both Spanish and English.

By then, footage of Pogačar’s crash had been examined over and again as though it were the Zapruder tape, and a consensus was emerging that his crash may have been caused by trying to avoid a stray rock on the road. Matxín, however, was reluctant to wade into the weeds of the whys and wherefores of this incident, beyond stressing his belief that there was no need to apportion blame. 

“Situations like this sometimes happen in cycling, unfortunately, and we shouldn’t blame anyone,” Matxín said. “I don’t know what might have happened, and obviously I’m not going to speculate on how it might have happened, but we mustn’t read too much into it. These are falls that just happen.” 

Pogačar was enjoying yet another career year, clocking up 22 wins so far in a season whose perfection had been broken only by second place at Paris-Roubaix. The expectation was that he would complete a full set of Grand Tour wins at this Vuelta before going on to annex a third successive world title in Montreal. 

UAE have since confirmed that Pogačar suffered a concussion, a broken collarbone, a C7 cervical fracture and multiple abrasions. It is not yet clear if his astonishing 2026 season ended here, and it seemed crass even to inquire as the dust settled on Saturday.

“We need to stand by Tadej the person, not Pogačar the champion or the race leader,” Matxín said. “We always want to be with him, especially in the tough moments.”

While the bulk of Vuelta journalists had decamped to the UAE bus, Enric Mas was being feted on the podium as the new leader of the race, though the Movistar man refused to wear the red jersey that had seemed so securely in the possession of Pogačar.

Mas had been the only man to come close to matching Pogačar on this Vuelta when he caught him on the upper reaches of Puerto El Bartolo on Thursday, but he had still begun the stage 3:50 behind the Slovenian. 

Like everyone else, he had been racing for second place, and he seemed uneasy about how to react to moving into the maillot rojo in such circumstances. “It’s bittersweet,” Mas confessed when he took a seat for his first press conference as Vuelta leader. 

It might also be precarious. Pogačar had been so dominant that there was never any chance of an insurrection on this Vuelta. But there is clearly a power vacuum now that the dictator has suddenly been removed by unforeseen circumstance, and there are multiple candidates to fill it. 

Mas has impressed so far, but Primoz Roglic (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) is just a minute behind, and nobody knows more than the four-time champion about how to grind out a Vuelta victory, even if his preparation was hindered by injury.

Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) looks the strongest climber of the Vuelta in Pogačar’s absence, but his time trialling is a weakness. Sepp Kuss (Visma) has won the Vuelta before, but this time he doesn’t ride for the same team as Roglic. Oscar Onley (Netcompany-Ineos) has interspersed promising signs with missteps. Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) has started slowly but he tends to finish Grand Tours strongly these days.

Each has arguments in his favour, but all come with clear caveats against their names too.

A Vuelta where Pogačar looked destined to produce perfection now looks set to serve up a very different kind of race, between a group of talented riders, each with clear flaws in their armoury. 

But everybody is vulnerable in a bike race, even Pogačar. His remarkable Vuelta is over. Another Vuelta begins.