Pogacar wraps the Vuelta up early – now the race can begin

Officially, the Vuelta a España lasts for three weeks, but in truth, the contest might only have lasted 300 metres. 

Felix Gall had the courage to track Tadej Pogačar’s decisive acceleration on the steepest portion of the Collada de Beixalis with 50km of stage 4 remaining, but he also had the good sense to check down as soon as the maillot rojo began to push him into the red. Nothing to be done.

Not for the first time, Pogačar forged clear with those familiar, languid pedal strokes, stretching out his advantage with disarming ease. At the summit 4km later, his buffer was already 1:38, and it would yawn out to two minutes atop the Coll d’Ordino before reaching a maximum of three ahead of the Alto de la Comella.

Pogačar could even afford to slow on the climb and exchange a fist bump with Andorra resident and UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammate Adam Yates, who had come out to watch from the roadside. He cruised over the other side and back into Andorra La Vella with a lead of 2:39 over the chasers. In the overall standings, he is already 3:21 clear of Primož Roglič. Even with 17 stages still to come, it’s hard not to feel as though this Vuelta has already been won. 

Outside the UAE Team Emirates-XRG bus, however, sports manager Matxín Joxean Fernández downplayed the idea that Pogačar had already put the Vuelta beyond the reach of his rivals, gamely insisting that the race was far from over. But surely only accident or illness can thwart Pogačar now.

“Look at the Tour and what happened to Jonas Vingegaard,” Matxín told us. “He’s always been a key player in Tadej’s Tours but there was a roundabout, a bend and suddenly there was a fall. So we have to be respectful with the stages and with the race. We haven’t even done the first four stages of the first week.”

There is a school of thought that the Vuelta rewards a fast start in ways that the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia do not. That’s certainly the opinion of the former ONCE manager Manolo Saiz, who won the Vuelta five times before the Operación Puerto doping scandal ended his career. “You win the Vuelta in the first week and then you mustn’t lose it in the following two,” Saiz insisted last year. 

After amassing such a hefty lead in the opening four days, Pogačar could potentially ride the remainder of this Vuelta in energy-saving mode, given that he still has miles to ride and promises to keep later in the season, with the Montreal Worlds, a home European Championships and Il Lombardia all on the agenda.

“We mustn’t think too much about what’s to come,” Matxín said. “We’ve saved the day, we did really well and tomorrow we’ll try to go through the next day. We’re going to be respectful with the rivals.”

Matxín pointed to the abrupt cancellation of stage 4 as proof of cycling’s inherent unpredictability. “Yesterday, we were controlling the race and suddenly it was cancelled. Who’d have thought that was going to happen, even two kilometres before? Nobody, so you have to take it day by day.”

Perhaps, but the fact remains that Pogačar hasn’t endured anything close to a bad day all year. Indeed, his only truly subdued outing over the past three seasons came in the time trial at last year’s Worlds in Kigali. At some point in the future, Pogačar’s reign will inevitably end, but that day feels a long way off. There is certainly nothing to suggest a reckoning is waiting for him between here and the finish in Granada on September 13.

The Vuelta’s excursion into Andorra was only 105km in length, but the day was packed with climbing, starting with the interminable Port d’Envalira. Jacques Anquetil was famously placed in severe difficulty on its slopes on the 1964 Tour de France before saving his race with a daring descent, but there would be no repeat of that drama here despite the early probing from Gall’s Decathlon CMA CGM team.

The French squad surprised many with their forcing on the Envalira and again on the lower slopes of the Collada de Beixalis, and they even succeeded in ridding Pogačar of some of his teammates. Then again, the Belgian national team tried that tack at the Zurich Worlds and Pogačar responded to his isolation by attacking with 100km to go.

Sven Vanthourenhout – then the Belgian manager, now a Red Bull sports director – was perhaps speaking from rueful experience when he questioned Decathlon’s strategy. “In this way of racing you are just helping UAE, I think. You make the race harder and so you make it easier for someone like Pogačar,” he said.

Over at the Netcompany-Ineos bus, however, sports director Imanol Erviti took a different view, noting that it was simply in keeping with Decathlon’s usual approach. “They ride like that. They did it in Burgos and the Giro, too, it’s sort of their trademark,” Erviti told us. “They did a good race, it’s just that staying with Tadej is very, very difficult. I don’t think Decathlon made errors.”

Decathlon sports director Cyril Dessel, for his part, noted that his team hadn’t really been racing against Pogačar at all. Even when Gall tracked Pogačar’s acceleration on the Beixalis, it was simply in the hope that he could form a select chasing group behind the world champion.

“No, our plan was not to fight Pogačar today, our plan was to make the difference with other guys for the top five and the podium in the first mountain stage,” Dessel said. “It’s a test for everyone in the bunch at the start of the Vuelta.”

It may be early, but it’s hard to shake the sense that the destination of the maillot rojo is already firmly decided. Even so, Pogačar bristled politely at the suggestion this Vuelta was a done deal when he took a seat in the press conference truck afterwards. 

“No, in Grand Tours, you cannot say it’s decided,” Pogačar said. “If I am a journalist, I would never ask this question. I would never say a Grand Tour is over. Even if it’s a 20-minute lead, you never know what happens. We go day by day. It’s a good lead. Of course, I don’t complain but it’s a long way to go to Granada.”

Then again, what else could he say? Four days in and the road has already spoken perfectly clearly on his behalf.