Pogacar, Del Toro, and UAE’s pursuit of a Grand Tour clean sweep

What do you give the team that has everything? UAE Team Emirates-XRG sports manager Matxin Joxean Fernández didn’t need to dwell too long on the question when it was lobbed his way recently.

“What am I longing for right now? I won’t lie to you, what Visma has achieved: winning the Giro, Tour, and Vuelta in the same year,” Matxin told Eurosport. 

In 2023, Jumbo-Visma, as they were then known, swept to all three Grand Tours through three different riders. Primož Roglič claimed the Giro d’Italia, Jonas Vingegaard defended his Tour de France title and then super domestique Sepp Kuss seized the day to win the Vuelta a España. For good measure, Vingegaard and Roglič rounded out the podium to underscore Visma’s clean sweep.

UAE struck back the following year when a rebooted Tadej Pogačar cruised to the first Giro-Tour double since the late Marco Pantani achieved the feat in 1998. The Slovenian has annexed two more Tours since and he could – ok, would – have won the Vuelta if he hadn’t crashed out in the red jersey on stage 8 this year. 

In the three seasons since Visma’s annus mirabilis, UAE have also been the peloton’s most successful team, and by a distance. They scored 81 wins in 2024, a record 97 in 2025 and 78 in 2026. 

But for 2027, it seems that Matxin’s ambition is to see their wider dominance across the entire calendar replicated in the more specific challenge of the three Grand Tours. It’s a feat easier said than done, even for a squad led by Pogačar and his dextrous talent. 

After Pogačar’s Giro-Tour double in 2024, they had to settle for ninth at the Vuelta, through Pavel Sivakov. They made a more concerted tilt at the feat in 2025, but while Pogačar again mastered Vingegaard at the Tour, Visma had the upper hand elsewhere. Isaac del Toro frittered away a Giro he could have won, allowing Simon Yates to snatch victory at the last, while Vingegaard overcame a spirited João Almeida at the Vuelta. 

In 2026, meanwhile, the bid for a Grand Tour hat-trick was undone by ill fortune. Adam Yates’ Giro challenge was ruined by a crash on stage 2, while Pogačar’s march towards the Vuelta was interrupted by his fall on stage 8 to Xeraco. 

The UAE squad met in Abu Dhabi in late October to start sketching out their plans for 2027, though the race programmes of their leaders won’t be confirmed and announced publicly until the team’s media day in Benidorm on December 18.

But even at this early juncture, the broad brushstrokes of UAE’s 2027 Grand Tour plans look self-evident. Pogačar may not love the Tour, as he suggested in 2025, but he has learned to live with it, as he demonstrated in 2026. As he chases a record-breaking sixth Tour title, it is a certainty that he will be on the start line in Edinburgh on July 2.

It also looks very likely that he will return to take care of unfinished business at the Vuelta, with his agent Alex Carera indicating that the Spanish race was far more likely to feature on his programme instead of the Giro.

There are six weeks between the Tour and the Vuelta in 2027 rather than the usual four in order to make room for the ‘Super Worlds’ in Haute-Savoie in August, but that shouldn’t dissuade Pogačar. Helpfully, the elite men’s road race comes a week before the Vuelta gets under way.

“The desire for next year would of course be the World Championships combined with the Tour and the Vuelta,” Pogačar said at a charity event in Slovenia last month. 

Despite the 71km of time trialling on the Tour route and despite the rapid development of Paul Seixas, Pogačar is the clear favourite for yellow in July. And, regardless of the field, he will be just as fancied to claim the red jersey he had to leave behind him on the 2026 Vuelta. 

Speaking to Domestique in October, Matxin was optimistic that Pogačar would be refreshed and ready for a big campaign in 2027 after his season was brought to such an abrupt halt.

“It would have been better not to crash, of course, but you always have to look for something positive in every negative situation,” Matxin told us. “It’s clear that now he’s been able to take a break during months when he didn’t used to before, namely September and October.” 

With Pogačar seemingly committed to the Tour and the Vuelta, and with UAE explicitly targeting all three Grand Tours, it seems increasingly likely that Del Toro will be the anointed one for the Giro in May.

After Almeida’s travails in 2026, Del Toro has very clearly moved up to number two in UAE’s Grand Tour depth chart, with Matxin suggesting to Domestique that the Mexican was the second-best rider in the world after Pogačar.

Del Toro is certainly the rider who gives UAE the biggest guarantees in a Grand Tour behind Pogačar, after placing second at the 2025 Giro and then taking third in his debut Tour last July. And much like Pogačar at the Vuelta, Del Toro will feel he has a wrong to right at the Giro after his costly stand-off with Richard Carapaz on the Finestre in 2025. 

It remains to be seen who else will target the Giro in 2027. Riders like Evenepoel and Vingegaard will be expected to focus squarely on the Tour, but murmurs persist of Seixas’ possible participation. Del Toro won their contest for the podium at the Tour, but that tussle was only the first round of what might be a long-running duel.

The moving parts at UAE aren’t just limited to the leaders, of course. The squad’s depth means that they have an array of options for supporting roles, though one imagines that building a team around Pogačar in July will take priority in Matxin’s planning.

Brandon McNulty’s world title victory has revived talk of testing his GC credentials, but the rainbow jersey told Domestique last month that his preference would be to return to the Tour in the service of Pogačar. 

Mainstays like Adam Yates and Tim Wellens will surely also feature in Pogačar’s supporting cast at the Tour, and it will be intriguing to see where precisely Almeida will fit in the UAE stage racing cosmos in 2027 after a season ruined by illness.

Del Toro’s schedule, meanwhile, will be a test of UAE’s longstanding policy with young riders at Grand Tours. As a rule, Matxin prefers to avoid sending young riders to two Grand Tours in the same season. Even Pogačar didn’t double up until he was no longer eligible for the white jersey. 

“With young riders, you can often give them opportunities too soon and have them tackle a Grand Tour before they’re fully ready,” Matxin told Domestique. “In my personal opinion, I prefer riders not to do two Grand Tours until they’re at least 24. But it’s not just about being 24 – it’s also about the experience he has built up.” 

Del Toro’s age – he turns 23 next month – strongly suggests that he will ride just one Grand Tour in 2027, even if the experience he has accrued to date means that there might be some leeway on that policy if needed.

Then again, Pogačar’s dominance was such that he didn’t need to lean too heavily on Del Toro to win the Tour last July. Indeed, the yellow jersey spent more time on the front working for his young teammate’s podium ambitions than vice-versa. 

Ultimately, the Pogačar factor is what makes Matxin’s seemingly outlandish ambition seem within reach. He is clearly capable of winning two Grand Tours in a season, as he did in 2024, and his strength is such that a talent like Del Toro can be freed from supporting duties to try to win the other one. 

There are no guarantees, and even Visma’s 2023 treble veered off in unexpected directions. But UAE’s pathway looks clear at least.