'We're here to win, not fool around' - Pogacar keeps hammering home point at Vuelta

It says something about Pogačar’s dominance these days that it came about almost by accident. On the final haul to Valdelinares, Felix Gall’s Decathlon CMA CGM squad had upped the ante to prepare the ground for an attack by the Austrian. Pogačar tracked the move and when he came through to take a turn on the front, he pulled away from Gall seemingly without realising it.

“Felix Gall just swung off, and I went through and continued with the same pace he was doing before, and then I was alone,” Pogačar shrugged after he had picked up another six seconds on Gall and 16 on Enric Mas (Movistar).

When he reached the finish, Mas suggested that Pogačar’s late acceleration had come about due to frustration with Decathlon’s decision to lift the pace on a day where Andreas Leknessund (Uno-X Mobility) won the from the break. Pogačar dismissed the idea when he freewheeled into the press room atop Valdelinares after the podium ceremony. 

“No, I was not angry at all,” Pogačar said. “I would have loved to have ridden with my teammates’ pace to the top of the climb, but Decathlon decided to race and they made it hard.

“Once I set into the rhythm, I followed Felix. I saw there were gaps growing between the GC guys and then Felix flicked the elbow to ask me to pass. I contributed, but I opened a gap and continued to the finish. For me it was just a quite normal, straightforward day.”

But every day is an extraordinary one in the cycling life of Pogačar, who keeps raising the bar for himself and then floating effortlessly over it. When he claimed his third stage victory of this Vuelta in Castelló on Thursday, the headline was that he had betrayed the merest flickers of vulnerability on the climb (and descent) of El Bartolo. 

On Friday, Pogačar’s decision not to hunt another stage victory saw him concede the green jersey to Wout van Aert (Visma | Lease a Bike), but he politely pushed back on the idea that the classification had really been a goal in the first place when asked if he was still going to fight for it.

“It was never the target, so the word ‘still’ is off the table. The main goal is the red jersey and that’s all,” said Pogačar, who now leads Mas by 3:50 in the overall standings, with Primoz Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) third at 4:50. 

Not for the first time, Pogačar finds himself without peer in a bike race, and that tends to lead to comparisons with those who came before him. Not for the first time, Pogačar found himself carefully batting away a comparison with Eddy Merckx. 

“I don’t really look into that,” Pogačar said. “I know that Merckx won so many races that I probably will never reach in my life, but it was completely different races also, they had every crit race and small race counting as a victory. It’s tough to judge that far back. 

“I would rather look at the palmarès of, I don’t know, Tom Boonen, Fabian Cancellara, Chris Froome or Alberto Contador, because it’s a bit more close to me than Eddy Merckx’s palmarès or anyone from that era.”

This era, in any case, belongs firmly to Pogačar, whose running tally of wins for 2026 already stands at 22. In the finale at Valdelinares, his effort was only enough to net him 19th on the stage, but he gently shrugged off the idea that he had attacked simply for the love of the game. 

“I mean yes, this, but also to win the general classification,” Pogačar said. “We are here to win, not fool around.”

Don’t we know it.