"Completely unnecessary" - Jan Bakelants argues that Tadej Pogacar's chase of Narváez 'will leave him with few allies when he is under pressure"
CyclingTuesday, 14 May 2024 at 11:30
Tadej Pogacar looked to help his teammate Juan Sebastián Molano to victory on stage 9 into Napoli and did a leadout in the final kilometer which was key to bringing back Jhonatan Narváez - who beat him on stage 1. Jan Bakelants sees this as a deliberate act and believes it could come back to the Slovenian later on.
"He surprised me in the final on Sunday. Why did he have to draw the line to get back at Narvaez? That was completely unnecessary," Bakelants said to Het Laatste Nieuws. "Was it 'payback time' because Narvaez won the first stage? That seems like a punishment to me, because Pogacar has already won three stages. In this way, this seems like a middle finger to INEOS Grenadiers."
This is not what Pogacar and UAE argued, as Narváez directly put in jeopardy the possible victory from a sprinter and Juan Sebastián Molano who the race leader worked to help. However, it is very viable to believe that Pogacar was thinking of 'killing two birds with one stone' by taking a turn in the front of the peloton, but that this could earn him a bad reputation in the peloton.
"Pogacar doesn't need friends, he is strong enough, but these kinds of actions will leave him with few allies when he is under pressure," Bakelants, himself a pro for many years and teammate of many big star, warns.
However, he does believe that this Tuesday's stage is very well suited to the UAE Team Emirates rider and that the team should try to control the day to snatch a fourth stage win: "If I were sports director at UAE-Emirates, I would have a clear assignment for Pogacar this week: to destroy everything so that he has a six or seven minute lead on Sunday evening."
"The course of the coming days is in his favor: this is not the toughest week. Today is the perfect ride to strike again: only 142 kilometers long, with a climb at the end where he doesn't have to fear anyone," he concluded.
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- Its a pretty easy comparison, Jonas is the best. Look at his opponent the Best rider of his generation and 3rd best of all time Pogi who he has beaten twice in TDF. Pedersen cant even beat MVDP in monumentsabstractengineer12-05-2025
- Did the person who wrote this article catch any of last season and what happened? Cut the guy some slack and stop feeding of someone else’s hard times, the above article is pretty redundant.Jezla12-05-2025
- Hey, all great and deserving of respect but let’s not look at things too pinkly. He’s only just above Marc Hirschi in the UCI rankings. He’s had the potential to do this for the last 7-8 years, it’s just all come together at once, having his moment. Maybe he went on a secret HA camp :-) Seriously though, he’s NEVER said he doesn’t believe in it (challenge: find me that quote), he said he hates it in words that would get an F1 driver punished, and for the same reasons that his fellow countryman Jonas gets crucified for, being away from family (though given team budgets, there is an obvious solution to that). Besides, not very professional of media and pundits to linger on past out of date sayings, he’s more or less changed his mind in the meantime and is no longer categoric about refusing to try.Mistermaumau12-05-2025
- I don’t think that pays off in cycling, you never know when your next problem will happen, injury, illness, crash, and using so much time to prepare for a big goal risks being very disappointing in a short career.Mistermaumau12-05-2025
- I love Remco but this year is a write-off. The smart move would be to treat it all as preparation for next season.Renz12-05-2025
- What you forget about hunting is that time is on the side of the hunter. You’d be a fool to underestimate rivals who haven’t peaked and I doubt you’ll hear any riders including TP or JV brushing him off like you’re trying. He’s done one GT against them, his first, what were you expecting? Still way ahead of any other contenders and that as a first-timer.Mistermaumau12-05-2025
- Its appears that way. Repeated crashes take a toll on the bodyabstractengineer11-05-2025
- He cannot hunt down something that he has never been close to in GTsabstractengineer11-05-2025
- He's just not the same after the crash at La Vuelta. I hope the knee injury does not "Chris Froome" his career.
KerisVroom11-05-2025 - Well, I didn’t hear any strict instructions from management so why shouldn’t it be like Visma’s infamous Vuelta unless things heat up? Am sure they don’t regret sweeping the podium which was only possible because internal rivalry was at least as strong as external.Mistermaumau11-05-2025
Oh no!
Working for his team mates like he did there helps him have the most important allies of all - his own team. Of course they are going to work for him anyway - it's their job. But I feel like Pogi really tries to return the favours to his team and that pays off in loyalty and motivation.
I doubt many riders from other teams would work for Pog just for the sake of it so no idea why this should be an issue.
UAE got Pogi, got good team and got money. They dont need to worry about other teams as it would be expected for them to turn on the screws when Pogi is down. In the TDF the two teams did not care about other teams at all.
Again this guy that's having some bad trip...