'It takes away all hope' - Peloton struggles to explain Pogacar’s dominance
There was a point on the Oude Kwaremont where the race slipped out of everyone else’s hands. Tadej Pogacar accelerated, and the selection followed quickly. Wout van Aert was the first to lose contact, then Remco Evenepoel. Mathieu van der Poel held on the longest, but he too had to let go before the final passage.
From there, the outcome was no longer in doubt. Pogačar rode clear to take his third win from three starts this season, having so far only raced Strade Bianche and Milan Sanremo, once again on his own.
For those behind him, the gap is becoming harder to place. Speaking in the HLN wielerpodcast, Decathlon CMA CGM rider, Oliver Naesen said it no longer fits the usual patterns.
“What Tadej is doing goes beyond demotivating,” the Belgian said, who finished 13th himself at +5.39. “Demotivating is when someone is very good, you can’t drop him and he beats you in the sprint. This is something else. It takes away all hope.”
Naesen described a peloton that is no longer split in two, but in three distinct levels. Pogačar alone at the front, a second group with riders like Van der Poel, Evenepoel and Van Aert, and then the rest.
“He’s a ten star rider,” he said. “Even they can’t stay with him when the course gets a bit harder.”
Former Olympic champion Greg Van Avermaet, who was also present on the podcast, is still looking for an explanation that goes beyond results and numbers.
“Where does he get that advantage physiologically?” he said. “They should really study him to see what makes him so good.”
He pointed out that the usual metrics offer only part of the picture. “VO2 max is measurable, but the difference won’t be that big. How does his body respond to effort? How does he recover? He’s riding about two kilometres per hour faster. The way he recovers and keeps going, I’ve never seen that.”
There were signs, too, that the effort had left its mark. After the finish, Pogačar appeared visibly drained. “I could see it straight away,” Van Avermaet said. “He had suffered as well, which is only normal.”
This Sunday, the Slovenian will line up for his fourth race day of 2026, targeting the one Monument still missing from his palmarès: Paris-Roubaix. Should he win, he would complete the full set of Monuments and join the illustrious company of Eddy Merckx, Rik Van Looy and Roger De Vlaeminck.
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