Belgian national road team manager Serge Pauwels has insisted that despite Tadej Pogačar's crushing domination in the 2024 World Championships Elite Men's Road Race, the Slovenian could have been beaten.
Last year in Zurich, Pogačar delivered one of the most impressive World Championships breakaways ever, taking off 100 kilometres from the finish and soloing to the finish.
But despite his superiority, in a lengthy interview with Nieuwsblad, Pauwels argued that towards the end of an extremely demanding race, Pogačar was beginning to flag and had teams raced differently, there might yet have been time to turn things around.
Pauwels was selected as the new Belgian national coach during the winter, replacing Sven Vanthourenhout, who managed Belgium's recent success at the World Championships and Olympic Games. He will also manage the Belgian Under 23 men's team.
Pauwels lamented the absence of Wout van Aert from the Belgian line-up in Zurich, saying "It might have turned out differently" if Van Aert was in Zurch instead of recovering from his injuries after a bad crash at the Vuelta a España.
As for this year's World Championships in Rwanda, Pauwels is already working hard on how to best combine one of the most powerful line-ups for every road race, with Remco Evenepoel and Van Aert both in the mix for team leadership.
"Thanks to the presence of Remco, Wout can race a bit more defensively," Pauwels suggested. "Not all pressure will then be on one person."
While refusing to be drawn about what Belgian success might look like, Pauwels was more communicative about how he plans on organising a team with so many top names in it.
That's a question that is arguably one of the biggest challenges for any major national squad coach and in Belgium, in particular, memories of how their elite men's rainbow jersey bid unravelled in 2021 in a labyrinth of team politics in 2021 are still relatively fresh. That it all happened on home soil, in the Worlds at Louvain, Belgium, only makes the setback even more memorable.
“ I think that's still more of a blessing than a curse [to have so many top riders]. Evenepoel and Van Aert themselves also realize that they can simply function complementarily. Thanks to the presence of Remco, Wout can race a bit more defensively," Pauwels said.
"Not all the pressure will then be on one person. Of course, you can't go to a race with five leaders either, because it makes it very difficult to decide on a strategy."
Pauwels does not say that Pogačar would have been beaten in Zurich had his rivals raced differently. However, he did not rule it out.
“All of the leading [rival] countries, including us, burned out a lot of riders early on," Pauwels said in hindsight.
"Rather we should have collaborated with, maybe, the Dutch and the Danes, and continued to maintain a high pace. Then it might have turned out differently."
"It's easy to say afterwards - but who would have thought Pogacar would stay away for so long? Everyone was surprised, including the riders."
Pogačar was fading, albeit unevenly, on the final laps of the Zurich circuit. Pauwels pointed out, arguing that Van Aert, had he been able to race, might have changed matters.
"At Visma-Lease a Bike, he sometimes has to be a team worker, but in the national squad, Wout must either aim for leadership or protected rider status," Pauwels said.
"Frankly, there isn't a course that Wout can't handle. If you look at how someone like [Mathieu] van der Poel was up there on a difficult course like Zurich, Wout could have done that too."
As national coach, Pauwels is already heavily involved in the behind-the-scenes planning - "90% of the back-up staff [for September] are already in place," he told Nieuwsblad .
After talking to many of the potential riders for the Belgian lineup like Jasper Stuyven, Tim Declerq, Edward Theuns and Thibau Nys in person during a recent trip to Spain, Pauwels' next step will be to check out the course and team hotel on site in Rwanda.
Pauwels also managed to see Evenepoel's coach Koen Pilgrim in Spain for an update on the Belgian star after his training accident last December.
Pilgrim told Pauwels that despite the recent emergence of a minor delay in his recovery timeline, the 2022 Road Race World Champion should still be back on the road in the spring.
Yet when it comes to the Elite Men's Road Race this September, the leading question right now for all the top team coaches in Rwanda - bar one - will surely be how to beat Pogačar.
"How can we make it as difficult as possible for Pogačar?" Pauwels asked rhetorically.
"That is a question that concerns me more than the course issue. That's something everyone should think about. ”
