Pogacar admits Vuelta balancing act with Worlds still to come: ‘I shouldn’t finish completely destroyed’

Tadej Pogačar has already won almost everything there is to win in cycling, but as he prepares to start the Vuelta a España in Monaco on Saturday, one significant gap remains on his extraordinary list of achievements.

The Slovenian has won the Giro d’Italia and is fresh from claiming a record equalling fifth Tour de France title in July, but he has never won the Vuelta. Victory in Spain would make him only the ninth male rider in history to win all three Grand Tours during his career.

For Pogačar, that opportunity is more than another entry on an already crowded palmarès.

“It hasn’t been long since the Tour, but I think it has been enough time to recover,” Pogačar said at the press conference ahead of the race in Monaco. “The start is close to my home and that is very nice. It is one of the challenges I still have left and I will give everything to achieve it.”

The Vuelta is familiar territory, even if Pogačar has been away for a long time. His only previous appearance came in 2019, during his first season as a professional and his first ever Grand Tour.

What happened over those three weeks gave the cycling world an early indication of what was to come.

Only 20 at the time, Pogačar won three mountain stages, including victories in Andorra and on Los Machucos, before producing a remarkable long range attack on the penultimate stage to Plataforma de Gredos. That final victory lifted him onto the overall podium in third place and secured the white jersey as the race’s best young rider.

Seven years later, he returns as a very different rider.

“For sure I have really nice, beautiful memories from the Vuelta 2019,” Pogačar said. “I was a young kid back then. Now it’s a completely different approach to any race than it was back then.”

Yet despite everything that has happened since, there is also something strangely new about returning to the race.

“It almost feels like it’s my first Vuelta,” he said. “I’m really looking forward.”

Pogačar’s attempt to complete his collection comes just months after his great rival Jonas Vingegaard achieved the same feat.

Vingegaard won the Giro d’Italia for the first time in May, adding the pink jersey to his Tour de France victories from 2022 and 2023 and his Vuelta triumph in 2025. The result made the Dane only the eighth male rider ever to win all three Grand Tours.

Before Vingegaard, only Jacques Anquetil, Felice Gimondi, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Alberto Contador, Vincenzo Nibali and Chris Froome had managed the feat.

Pogačar could now become number nine.

Asked whether seeing Vingegaard complete the set had added extra motivation, however, the world champion played down the significance of his rival getting there first.

“I don’t know how much Jonas winning the Giro has influenced things,” Pogačar said. “For me, winning all three Grand Tours is a major goal and a dream.”

It is one of the increasingly rare boxes left unchecked in Pogačar’s career.

The UAE Team Emirates-XRG leader won his first Giro at his first attempt in 2024 and last month joined Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault and Miguel Induráin as a five time Tour de France winner. The Vuelta is therefore the only Grand Tour that has yet to end with Pogačar on the top step of the final podium.

His status as the overwhelming favourite will inevitably influence the race, but Pogačar rejected the suggestion that his recent dominance means the outcome should be considered a formality.

“I don’t know if it’s even worth answering this question,” he said with a laugh when asked whether he expected an easier task than at the Tour.

“There is a very stacked competition here. I don’t know why you would say that it was much tougher competition in the Tour, because here we have amazing talent on the start line and it’s going to be a very tough race.

“It’s going to be a hard battle. Everybody who is here, I expect them to be in top shape. There are very, very good riders here and it’s never, never, never easy.”

The first indication of his condition will come almost immediately.

The Vuelta begins on Saturday with a 9.4 kilometre individual time trial through Monaco, where Pogačar lives and trains. The Slovenian knows the roads intimately, but the technical nature of the course could make the opening stage unpredictable.

“You just need to go a bit slower in the corners. That’s it,” he said with a laugh.

“I know the roads really, really well. I go with the motorbike, I go with the car, I go with the bike, I walk them. It’s not going to be a 60 kilometres per hour flat out time trial. You will have to use the brakes and use a bit of a different pacing strategy than what we are used to.”

Pogačar says he will not hold back in the battle for the first red jersey, although he believes other riders may be better suited to the short and technical test.

“I’m going to give everything. The first stage will not be easy for me. I will do my best, but there are guys who will be very fast and who are very technical. I will try, but it is going to be difficult.”

The race will not give him much time to settle in. Stage three already takes the peloton into the mountains at Font Romeu, before stage four features a short but demanding 104.8 kilometre mountain stage around Andorra la Vella.

Pogačar expects that day to provide the first meaningful answer about how well he has recovered from the Tour.

“I love racing in Spain. The atmosphere and the people are incredible,” he said. “My legs feel good, but we will see how they perform from stage four onwards.”

Winning the Vuelta, however, is not the final objective of Pogačar’s season.

After three demanding weeks in Spain, the Slovenian still has three major targets waiting for him: the World Championships, European Championships and Il Lombardia.

That creates a delicate balancing act. Pogačar wants to complete his Grand Tour collection, but he also knows that reaching Granada with nothing left could compromise the final part of his season.

“I will have to see my shape in the first few stages, how it is,” he said. “I’m always thinking that I still have three big races after the Vuelta as well, Worlds, Europeans and Lombardy.”

Pogačar acknowledged that the demands of the remainder of his season will influence how he races the Vuelta.

“I shouldn’t finish the Vuelta completely destroyed.”

With the World Championships, European Championships and Il Lombardia still to come, the Slovenian knows he will have to manage his efforts across the three weeks in Spain rather than expend energy unnecessarily.

“We need to be smart and play the best three week race,” he said. “We will have to see from the first few days how we approach the stages after that.”