Tadej Pogačar, already the holder of five Tour de France titles and a Giro d'Italia crown, will line up at the Vuelta a España this week with a singular ambition: to become only the ninth rider in history to win all three Grand Tours. The race begins on Saturday in Monaco — where the Slovenian star lives — and runs until September 13.
Pogačar, 27, last rode the Vuelta in 2019, finishing third on his Grand Tour debut. Since then, he has become the dominant force in professional cycling, yet the Spanish race has remained the one conspicuous gap in his palmares. "For me to win all three Grand Tours has been a big goal and dream for a few years now," he told reporters ahead of the race. "It is one missing goal from my career, so I will give my best to try and win." Victory would place him alongside legends such as Eddy Merckx and Bernard Hinault, who also completed the Grand Tour treble.
Several factors appear to work in Pogačar's favour. The race's opening time trial takes place on roads he knows intimately from living nearby, eliminating travel fatigue entirely. His team at UAE Team Emirates-XRG also structured his season deliberately to leave him with sufficient mental freshness after the Tour de France — forgoing an altitude training camp in favour of rest and recuperation. The Tour itself proved less taxing than anticipated: his main rival Jonas Vingegaard, the Danish rider who won last year's Vuelta, crashed out early and will not race again this season, meaning he cannot defend his title. Pogačar used the Tour's final week partly to help teammate Isaac Del Toro onto the podium rather than push his own limits further.
His trainer, South African Jeroen Swart, has been careful to temper expectations. "The Vuelta is long and hard, even for someone like Tadej," Swart noted. One genuine concern is the relative weakness of Pogačar's support roster: key domestiques including Nils Politt and mountain specialists of the calibre of Del Toro and Adam Yates are absent. Pogačar himself acknowledged the need to race intelligently, noting that the World Championships, European Championships, and the monument classic Il Lombardia all follow the Vuelta. "I shouldn't end this race completely destroyed," he said. "I need to race smart."
Nonetheless, the cycling world broadly expects Pogačar to impose himself early — likely at the climb to Font Romeu on stage three and in the mountain stages through Andorra the following day — and then manage his advantage to the finish in Madrid. Anything other than a Pogačar victory would rank among the sport's great upsets.