Pogacar's tilt at history unlikely to be derailed by the Vuelta's wild ways

The Vuelta a España has always been the wildest and most unruly of the Grand Tours. Even before it shifted to its current autumn date in 1995, the race had a pleasing tendency to veer sharply from the anticipated script.

Unexpected winners abounded, from Éric Caritoux to Melchior Mauri, and the Sierra de Guadarrama outside Madrid seemed to double as cycling’s Bermuda Triangle, a place where a rider’s Vuelta challenge could collapse upon itself in ways that defied all logical explanation. 

The Vuelta’s rough and rowdy ways grew even more pronounced in the modern era, when the autumn race, per the pointed assessment of Banesto manager José Miguel Echavarri, became a resit for men who had failed the big exam in July.

The past three decades have thrown up storylines like Abraham Olano’s internecine strife with José María Jiménez in 1998, Jan Ullrich’s comeback in 1999 and Cadel Evans’ costly puncture in 2009. The Vuelta has produced leftfield leaders like Aitor Gonzalez in 2002, Isidro Nozal in 2003, Juan José Cobo in 2011 and Chris Horner in 2013. 

Even in the last fifteen years or so, when the WorldTour had begun to create greater homogeneity among Grand Tours, the Vuelta stood as a race apart. Chris Froome was the best Grand Tour rider of his generation, but it took repeated attempts and a litany of frustrations before he finally managed to tame the Vuelta as he had done the Tour de France.

In the post-Froome era, the Vuelta has continued its penchant towards unpredictability. Primož Roglič’s record four wins were not achieved without real suspense, while Jumbo-Visma’s dominance of 2023 still threw up a surprise winner in Sepp Kuss. Even Jonas Vingegaard’s dominant triumph of a year ago was beset by considerably more turbulence than his smooth path to Giro d’Italia victory in May. The Vuelta, it seems, is different. 

Enter Tadej Pogačar to disabuse us all of that notion. Seven years on from notching up a hat-trick of stage wins and third overall on his 2019 debut, the Slovenian returns to the Vuelta as the overwhelming favourite to win the race and complete a full set of Grand Tour victories.

There are 3,275km and all sorts of potential pitfalls between the start in Monaco and the finish in Granada, but, like most of Pogačar’s races these days, this Vuelta already looks a lot like a foregone conclusion. 

Within twelve months of that precocious Vuelta debut, Pogačar was already a youthful Tour champion and the best rider in the sport, and his stock has continued to rise ever since. He was already routinely compared with Eddy Merckx in those early seasons, but the comparisons have become more urgent since 2024, when Pogačar switched coach and his performances reached a level far beyond the reach of his contemporaries. 

2024, which yielded the Giro, Tour, World Championships and two Monuments, was lauded as a career year at the time, but now it just looks like the new normal for a rider who defies all logical explanation. 

There are still miles to go and promises to keep this season, but Pogačar’s 2026 campaign already looks like it will surpass everything he has achieved to this point. His only defeat of the year to date came at Paris-Roubaix in April, and even then, he brought Wout van Aert all the way to the velodrome before succumbing in a two-up sprint. 

All told, Pogačar has won 18 races so far in 2026, including Strade Bianche, Milan-Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the Tour de Romandie, the Tour de Suisse and a record-equalling fifth Tour de France.

Twelve months ago, Pogačar looked decidedly jaded by the end of the Tour and he quickly made clear that he would not add the Vuelta to his schedule. This time around, he seemed altogether lighter of mood both during and after the Tour, and there was little surprise when UAE Team Emirates-XRG confirmed that he would indeed take aim at the Vuelta. There was no need to overthink it: the conditions have never been better.

Pogačar’s sparing spring programme – five one-day races, followed by the Tour de Romandie – was the first hint that the Vuelta was in his sights in 2026, and his most straightforward Tour victory yet made his participation an inevitability. Externally at least, there was no sign of the physical and mental fatigue that beset Pogačar towards the end of the 2025 race. 

This time out, he finished his Tour by beating Marco Pantani’s 31-year-old record time on Alpe d’Huez and then moonlighting as a super domestique to help teammate Isaac del Toro to the third step of the podium. Pogačar gave the unnerving impression that he had dominated the Tour without ever having to go too deep.

Received wisdom says that the second Grand Tour of the season is harder won than the first, but Pogačar already gave lie to that logic with his astonishing 2024 Giro-Tour double, when he racked up half a dozen stage victories in France, including three in the final three days. 

His opponents at that Tour included his eternal rival Jonas Vingegaard and a very sharp Remco Evenepoel. The final start list for this Vuelta remains a work in progress, but nobody of that exalted level will line up against Pogačar. 

Roglič, if injury allows him, looks the most likely challenger, while riders like Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM), Oscar Onley (Netcompany-Ineos) and Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) will vie for the podium. But in truth – and much like at the 2024 Giro – Pogačar will be his own biggest rival here. 

This iteration of Pogačar doesn’t have any gaps in his armoury, and there is nothing to suggest that the four-week turnaround from the Tour will leave him in any way exposed either. Indeed, the route of this Vuelta might even allow him to put the GC to bed relatively early and then manage his energy with a view to chasing a third straight rainbow jersey in Montreal.

The former ONCE manager Manolo Saiz – who won the race five times before the Operación Puerto doping scandal ended his career – has long been of the belief that the Vuelta follows a different rhythm to the Giro or the Tour. “You win the Vuelta in the first week and then you mustn’t lose it in the following two,” he told Malpensa24 last year. 

Like all categorical statements, it isn’t entirely true, but it certainly carries some weight in 2026, where the route is rather frontloaded. Pogačar has a chance to strike an early blow in Andorra on stage 4, while the first week also includes summit finishes at Valdelinares and the Alto de Aitana. If Pogačar operates at anything like his ‘normal’ 2026 level, he might well have put the maillot rojo beyond the reach of allcomers by the first rest day.

The third week of the Vuelta, by contrast, is relatively straightforward, with only the Jerez time trial and the penultimate stage around Sierra Nevada standing out as obvious GC days. By then, Pogačar might already have toggled into energy-saver mode with the Worlds and a home European Championships in mind.  

If the Tour field – Vingegaard and Evenepoel included – couldn’t live in the same postcode as Pogačar in July, then it seems unlikely that the world champion will find a closer challenger at the Vuelta, residual fatigue or not.

History says the Vuelta is never as straightforward as all that, of course, but the lie of the land feels very different in the Pogačar era. In May, after all, Vingegaard cruised to an emphatic Giro victory where the biggest threat to his hegemony was a minor cold at the start of the second week. The only jeopardy Pogačar has experienced himself in 2026, meanwhile, came at Milan-Sanremo and Paris-Roubaix. Not coincidentally, those are races where wits and luck carry almost as much weight as watts and legs.

A three-week race like the Vuelta, by contrast, naturally lends itself to the strongest man, and so even if Pogačar makes a mistake or two along the way – unlikely, as he makes few errors these days – he has the talent and the terrain to overcome them. 

With the defending champion Vingegaard absent, meanwhile, there is no rider in the field with even residual belief in his own ability to beat Pogačar over three weeks. The Vuelta has thrown up plenty of surprises over its nine decades of history, but a Pogačar defeat here would top the lot.

The Vuelta will be entertaining because the Vuelta always is, and it will throw up some surprises because the third Grand Tour of the season always does. But suspense is unlikely to feature on the menu. Not on Pogačar’s watch.