On Thursday evening, the Road World Championships press pack decamped 30km south of Zürich to the town of Cham on the northern shore of Lake Zug. In generations past, this was the kind of pilgrimage reserved for audiences with the traditional powers like Italy and Belgium, but the landscape of cycling has shifted in the 2020s.
These days, the epicentre is in Slovenia. Tadej Pogačar and Primož Roglič have made sure of that. Between them, they have swept this season’s Grand Tours, and on Sunday, all eyes are on Pogačar as he looks to emulate Eddy Merckx and Stephen Roche by completing the Triple Crown of Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and Worlds.
On arriving at Slovenia’s base at the OYM Centre, a multi-sports complex on the outskirts of Cham, journalists were ushered into a banked auditorium to await the arrival of Pogačar and Roglič. Before the press conference got underway, the founder of the centre, one Dr Hans-Peter Strebel provided a sort of vague infomercial about his business before the star turns finally took centre stage.
Like in Imola in 2020, the practicalities of Roglič and Pogačar’s co-existence in the Slovenian team has been the subject of some intrigue ahead of the race. As in their pre-race video conference webinar in Italy four years ago, however, there was only mutual bonhomie on show on Thursday evening, as they smiled and shrugged their way a half-hour press conference, speaking first in Slovenian and then in English.
In an interview with state broadcaster RTV Slovenija this week, Roglič had stated that he had “nothing to lose” in Sunday’s race, adding that he wouldn’t have “ten more World Championships ahead". On Thursday evening, however, Roglič breezily acknowledged that one-day racing was a sphere better suited to his compatriot than to him.
“Looking to myself and Tadej, he is winning all the one-day races, he is one of the best ones at this. Myself, I just do a couple of them a year,” Roglič said. “It’s a nice challenge, and the challenge is to get the best out with the guys. On paper, we have strong names, but I prefer to be strong on the road. That’s the important one.”
Asked what would happen if he and Pogačar found themselves alone together at the head of the race in the finale, Roglič shrugged playfully. “I guess one will be first and one will be second, I don’t know,” he said. “We will play a game, eh.”
Pogačar smiled as he took up the microphone: “Yeah, rock, paper, scissors, it’s the standard protocol.”
Slovenia will be without Matej Mohorič, who withdrew this week with a wrist injury, but their status as a superpower is underlined by the fact they have qualified a full complement of eight riders for Sunday’s race. Roglič is a dangerous outsider, despite his struggles in last weekend’s time trial, but Pogačar is surely the alpha and omega of national coach Uroš Murn’s plans for these Worlds.
“A rainbow jersey is something really special in cycling, the most unique jersey,” Pogačar said. “Everybody wants it, I would guess. You wear it all year round and it defines you as the best rider in the world. It’s a big goal for me for the last couple of years. I will strive for it this year and if not, then in the next couple of years.”
Pogačar has lined up at the Worlds in each of his five professional seasons, but his record in the race is curiously underwhelming. Prior to his bronze medal in Glasgow last year, the biggest impression he made on the event came in Imola, when he launched a daring attack on the penultimate lap in a year when Roglič was clearly Slovenia’s preferred option.
“Last year in Glasgow, I must say it was one of the hardest races I’ve ever done,” Pogačar said. “It was not a parcours really suited for me, it was too explosive in the last three hours of racing, and I was exhausted after the race. This year is much better, so let’s see what this race holds.”
2024
Pogačar was running on fumes by the time he reached the Glasgow Worlds, a point hammered home by his lacklustre showing in the time trial that followed. His 2023 campaign was trying one after the crash that forced him out of Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and he had arrived in Scotland on the back of another bruising Tour defeat to Jonas Vingegaard.
2024, by contrast, has been the year where pretty much everything Pogačar has tried has come off. The closest thing to a setback came when Milan-San Remo again eluded his grasp in March. Since then, he has put together (another) season for the ages, annexing the first Giro-Tour double since 1998 while racking up half a dozen stage wins in each race.
Pogačar’s last outing before this Worlds was an ominous solo victory at the Grand Prix de Montréal, a race with a similar altitude gain to Sunday’s main event, a 274km race that concludes with seven laps of an arduous 27km circuit around Zürich.
“It’s a tricky parcours. None of the climbs are really long, but it’s not straight downhill after the climbs so there’s not a lot of time to recover,” Pogačar said.
“I can see a lot of scenarios, because there’s a lot of space for long-range attacks and to make the race hard.
“It’s hard to say if the first hard climb [Zürichbergstrasse] is tough enough to make the difference. But I think in the end the difference will come from the length of the race and how hard it is.”
Pogačar warned against counting out the defending champion Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands) on this rugged course – “I saw somewhere he lost 1.5kg” – and he gently dismissed the idea that he might need to finish alone to win the rainbow jersey: “Sprinting after 274k with so much elevation done, that’s totally different.”
Remco Evenepoel’s name inevitably cropped up. While Pogačar is chasing the Triple Crown, the Belgian is seeking to complete a Quadruple of his own. Evenepoel claimed both gold medals at the Paris 2024 Olympics and he lines up as Pogačar’s most likely challenger here after defending his time trial world title last weekend.
“He looked super good on the TT, he handled the pressure pretty good too, with the chain drop on the start line and from what I read he didn’t have power,” Pogačar said. “The TT is his discipline where he shines the best, I think. But Sunday is a different game.”
Once the press conference formalities had ended, Pogačar moved onto the marketing game, showing off the custom Colnago bike he will ride on Sunday, the multicoloured paint job designed to showcase his long list of successes. He smiled when it was put to him that a rainbow jersey on Sunday would be good business for his bike supplier. “We all make good money then, eh,” he said.
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