Pogacar's season is over: How his absence changes the Worlds and beyond

In the week since Pogačar’s crash at the Vuelta, there had been all sorts of speculation about his recovery and whether he might return to action in time for one or all of the World Championships, European Championships and Il Lombardia.

When Pogačar was photographed during the week emerging from hospital in Barcelona without a neck brace, some observers read a little too much into the tea leaves and suggested that he was still on track to defend his world title in Montreal. 

It was easy to get caught up in the speculation, because Pogačar routinely breaks the normal rules in situations like this. Last March, after all, he bounced back up off the tarmac in Imperia to set a record time on the Cipressa and claim the most tumultuous Milan-Sanremo of the 21st century.

But this was one remontada that was beyond even Pogačar’s otherworldly powers. At Milan-Sanremo, Pogačar’s flesh wounds were immediately anesthetised by adrenaline. After the Vuelta, his broken bones called for a longer period of rehabilitation than the calendar allowed.

On Saturday morning, Pogačar’s UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad confirmed that his season was over, ruling out the hypothesis that he might be forced out of the Worlds but still target a European Championships on home roads in Slovenia or a sixth straight Il Lombardia.

It seems that once the defence of the rainbow jersey was off the table, UAE and Pogačar took the decision to shut down his season and focus on hitting the ground running again in 2027. Or, as the team’s medical chief Dr Adrian Rotunno put it: “There is no benefit in accelerating that process simply to meet a racing deadline.”

Pogačar’s absence leaves a considerable vacuum at races where he was the overwhelming favourite for victory, and we are already seeing the effects of that at the Vuelta. The Slovenian had, barring accident, already won the Vuelta with his onslaught in Andorra in the opening week, amassing a lead of almost four minutes after seven stages. 

But Pogačar’s fateful accident arrived on stage 8 to Xeraco, of course, and the Vuelta has since morphed into an entirely different kind of race. The summit finish at the Alto de Aitana on stage 9 would ordinarily have witnessed a solo exhibition from Pogačar. Without him, it produced a gripping series of jabs and counterpunches among riders who now found themselves competing for the maillot rojo rather than for second place.

Enric Mas (Movistar) has, for now at least, emerged as the strongman in Pogačar’s absence, holding the red jersey and extending his lead, but there are no guarantees his form will hold all the way to Granada. 

With Pogačar, the Vuelta was often a simple equation of watts and kilos. His power-to-weight ratio trumped all others as he strung together repeated performances of near perfection. 

Without him, the Vuelta is a messier and altogether more imperfect affair, but arguably a more compelling one too. It certainly has a suspense that Pogačar simply could not provide. Will Mas hold his nerve? Will Primož Roglič outlast him? Can Felix Gall provide a finishing touch to Decathlon’s collective strength?

All of a sudden, the Vuelta has become a race of questions rather than answers. And, most intriguingly of all, the same uncertainty now applies to the remainder of the calendar, starting with the Montreal Worlds.

In 2025, Pogačar won the World Championships, European Championships and Il Lombardia on successive weekends with three astonishing long-range efforts, with Remco Evenepoel soloing to second place on each occasion.

Evenepoel was already Pogačar’s dauphin at the Tour de France in July, and he already looked, by some distance, the man most likely to offer some semblance of a challenge to his expected hegemony at the Montreal Worlds.

By that logic, Evenepoel is now the obvious favourite to land the rainbow jersey on September 27, but he will be aware that the absence of Pogačar utterly changes the dynamic of the race. With Pogačar in the field, the Worlds was all but certain to be decided à la pédale given the Slovenian’s penchant for making races as hard as possible from as far out as possible.

While Pogačar’s sheer strength denied Evenepoel gold at last year’s World and European Championships road races, it also virtually guaranteed him the silver medal on each occasion because it removed any real tactical subtlety from the events. Evenepoel was, by a distance, the second-best rider on show at each race, and so he was streets ahead of the man in third place on each occasion.

Without Pogačar, the Montreal Worlds could be a more tactical and tentative affair. Evenepoel had nothing to lose in a head-to-head contest with Pogačar, but he has plenty more to think about as the de facto race favourite. 

For one thing, there is another rainbow jersey contender within the Belgian camp, with Wout van Aert catching form at just the right time on the Vuelta. And with Pogačar out of the picture, there are plenty more riders who will start to revise their ambitions for the Canadian expedition.

Mathieu van der Poel had a sobering outing at the mountain bike Worlds, but he will use the Tour de Luxembourg to reset and refocus on regaining the road title he won in Glasgow three years ago. 

Tom Pidcock won that mountain bike title and now sets his sights on the road. He has never been especially cowed by racing against Pogačar in the first place – witness last year’s Strade Bianche or this year’s Sanremo – and he will fancy his chances in Montreal. 

Paul Seixas pushed Pogačar closer than anyone at Liège-Bastogne-Liège in April, and he will now line up in Montreal with the highest ambition. In Kigali twelve months ago, Isaac del Toro rode a little too generously with Pogačar out of deference to his trade team leader. He will have no such constraints in Canada.

Men who were making the trek to Quebec with the silver medal as their ceiling will allow themselves to dream over the next three weeks. 

It will be a similar story at the European Championships in Ljubljana, which had seemed destined to double as a celebratory homecoming for the champion, a sort of ‘Pogi Challenge’ for the pros.

And Il Lombardia will finally have a new winner after five years as Pogačar’s fiefdom. The final Classic of the year often used to reward unexpected bolters (Oliver Zaugg, Mirko Celestino) or riders saving their seasons at the last (Damiano Cunego, Michele Bartoli), but in the 2020s, it had become the WorldTour’s answer to Groundhog Day.

The last three men to win before Pogačar, incidentally, were Jakob Fuglsang, Bauke Mollema and Thibaut Pinot. A different world. 

It’s entirely a matter of personal taste as to whether the final weeks of the season will be more or less compelling in Pogačar’s absence, but we can all agree that they’ll certainly be very different. 

Pogačar, meanwhile, will already be turning his thoughts to 2027. He hasn’t endured too many setbacks in his career, but when they arrive, there tends to be a visible reaction. 

Defeat at the 2023 Tour and a (relatively) listless end to that campaign saw Pogačar retool under Javier Sola’s tutelage to become the rider who has swept almost all before him over the past three seasons. When Pogačar was caught and passed by Evenepoel at last year’s time trial Worlds, he responded with a performance for the ages in the road race the following week. 

UAE sugar-coated news of the end of Pogačar’s season by announcing he had extended his contract until the end of 2032. However it plays out, the peloton would do well to enjoy the interregnum while they can.