Four-time Tour de France champion Tadej Pogacar is set to skip the Vuelta a Espana, leaving the year’s final Grand Tour as one of the few races he still has yet to win.
Pogacar, who equalled Chris Froome’s four titles in Paris on Sunday, has cut a more downbeat figure than usual at points during this Tour de France, saying “I can’t wait for the Tour to be over” during the tough final week in the Alps, and admitting afterwards that it was the hardest edition of the race he has contested. This year’s route featured five hors-categorie summit finishes and a punchy, Classics-style opening week before gruelling stints in the Pyrenees and Alps, and a full-throttle finish taking in several steep climbs up Montmartre in Paris.
So it is not a huge surprise that the 26-year-old has opted out of racing the Vuelta a Espana, which starts on 23 August in Torino, Italy.
“After such a demanding Tour, we decided it was best to take a break,” Pogacar said through his team on Tuesday. “The Vuelta is, of course, a race I would dearly love to return to. I have fantastic memories there from 2019, but now the body is telling me to rest.”
He added that his race calendar for the second half of the year will include the Grands Prix in Canada in September, and that a major target will be the World Championships, held at altitude in Kigali, Rwanda.
“I’m excited to go back to Canada; the races are tough but beautiful, and they fit my style well. I’ll be aiming to be back racing well again for that part of the season and for the World Championships especially,” he said.
Pogacar would have been a heavy favourite for the Vuelta, which he has not ridden since his breakout year in 2019, when he made his Grand Tour debut there. The Slovenian, then aged 20, won three stages and the best young rider classification en route to a third-place finish overall.
In his absence two-time Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard, who finished second behind Pogacar in Paris, is the favourite to win the maillot rojo. His Visma-Lease a Bike squad have not confirmed their final line-up for the Vuelta.
Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates-XRG team have named their eight-man squad for the race, which was won by Pogacar’s compatriot Primoz Roglic of Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe last year.
Portuguese climber Joao Almeida, who crashed heavily early in the Tour and abandoned with a broken rib, is set to be a co-leader along with Spanish rider Juan Ayuso at his home race.
Ivo Oliveira, Domen Novak, Mikkel Bjerg, Jay Vine, Marc Soler, and Felix Grossschartner complete the line-up.
