After winning his 2025 season debut at the UAE Tour, world champion Tadej Pogačar is looking to "switch engine" for the one-day Classics, with no more stage races on his programme until the Critérium du Dauphiné in June.
Having dominated much of the Emirati race's 1013 total kilometres to claim his third overall title, Pogačar will focus now on his next race at Strade Bianche on March 8, where he is the defending champion, before racing at Milan-San Remo - one of his huge goals for the season.
He'll head to Milan from the UAE and spend all the days until he takes on Tuscany's white gravel roads again in Italy. Last year, Pogačar claimed his second Strade Bianche title with an imperious 80km solo ride.
"We will be in Italy the whole time [before Strade]. It was a pretty solid week of racing here, so maybe we will have some days of recovery then switch the engine to one-day races, and do some specific work for that," said Pogačar post-stage as he explained his build-up to the Italian Classic.
"[I have] no more stage races until the Dauphiné probably, just one-day races for me, so I need to switch the mentality for the one-day races now."
The decision to focus mainly on a one-day campaign until the summer is ultimately one spearheaded by Pogačar himself, however, his team have no worries about how this may affect his lead-up to the Tour de France and a possible return to the Vuelta.
"It's mostly my decision. But yeah, the team support me in what I want but they also tell me what they want, and we normally meet halfway," Pogačar said. "It's a good relationship, a good vibe and a good program - I don't mind it."
Why has he made that decision? "They're finished faster," he said jokingly with a smile, "just one day and you go home." But thankfully, his team boss provided more light on the situation.
"For the [rest of the] beginning of the season, he's concentrated on the Classics," said Team Principal and CEO Mauro Gianetti to reporters including Cyclingnews at the finish.
"When done, he will do the preparation for the Tour just after the Classics – he will do altitude training and the Dauphiné because [doing the] Dauphiné, Tour and Vuelta is quite enough."
UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Pogačar made sure it was clear this was their race, having lost it for the past two seasons while their big star hadn't been present. Not only were the Slovenian's immediate family still present, but his manager Alex Carrera and almost all of UAE's high-ranking staff were also there to witness the victory.
Pogačar sealed the win in the UAE with an emphatic attack and a 7.8km solo ride up Jebel Hafeet on Sunday, capping off a perfect start to the season. But if he wants to continue on the dominance into March, he'll have to reel in victory at one of the few races that has eluded him – Milan-San Remo.
La Primavera arrives two weeks after Strade Bianche, on March 22 and Pogačar will be making his fifth appearance there after improving his result every year from 12th in 2020 up to third in last season's race. Victory there would be his eighth at a Monument.
"I was in pretty good shape at Milan-San Remo last year," he said. "But I'm just hoping for that a bit of luck and a good moment in the race to break off maybe from the sprinters, but we will see.
"I won my first race of the season. For me, I'm enjoying it now after this big goal and then we'll go to the classics. Now I hope I also find the good legs and we see the results. I don't mind if everything doesn't go as smoothly as last year."
After racing in Italy, Pogačar will make his highly anticipated return to the Cobbled Classics in Belgium, where he will compete in the E3 Saxo Classic, Gent-Wevelgem, and the Tour of Flanders.
He'll be buoyed for those races after, on the final stage to Jebel Hafeet, only his two new Belgian teammates, Rune Herregodts and Florian Vermeersch, got into the front echelon with him when racing kicked off 126km from the line.
They then also did the lead-out on the climb itself before Pogačar launched the race-winning move and left Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) and Oscar Onley (Picni- PostNL) behind.
It likely wasn't how the team drew it up in the meeting this morning, however, the result was all the same, with Pogačar taking home the UAE Tour's Unity Trophy with the biggest winning margin in the race's seven-edition history.
"It was a really hard day, the team did a super good job," Pogačar said. "I survived at the front until the climb and saved my legs and it was a really good day and I'm super happy to do it here.
"We tried to stay as safe as possible at the start to keep us away from the danger from a splitting group and that was the first job done - to bring me to the climb as fresh as possible and that's what they did - in the end, it was a really perfect day for us."
