"Every day on the bus we talked about it" – Tadej Pogacar reveals expensive gift he bought for UAE teammates after the Tour de France

Tadej Pogacar has revealed how a running joke on the team bus during the 2023 Tour de France turned into an expensive gesture of thanks for his UAE Team Emirates - XRG teammates.

Speaking on Jakob Fuglsang’s new podcast Fuglsang i Feltet, Pogacar explained that coffee talk became such a daily obsession during that Tour that, after losing the yellow jersey to Jonas Vingegaard, he decided to dig into his own pocket. “In 2023 I decided to buy every rider on the Tour team a Marzocco coffee machine. Every day on the bus before and after the stage, we talked about coffee. They talked about coffee all the time, and so it’s a good gift,” Pogacar said.

The Slovenian added that he has become part of cycling’s growing amateur-barista culture himself. “I have a Marzocco Micra. I can steam the milk pretty well, and I try to pour a rosetta, but 90% of the time it looks like crap,” he said with a smile.

Rather than a token souvenir, the gesture became a shared reminder of a Tour in which UAE’s collective work was tested, scrutinised and bonded together under the pressure of a GC fight that ultimately didn’t fall their way. Each rider on that 2023 Tour squad received the same high-end machine — a personal gift tied to the daily rhythm they lived through together.

The coffee-machine gesture fits neatly into a broader pattern that has already emerged around Pogacar’s end-of-Tour thank-you presents.

On NBC Sports’ Cycling Beyond the Podium podcast earlier this year, Tejay van Garderen previously recounted an anecdote — which he said came directly from Brandon McNulty — about the aftermath of Pogacar’s 2021 Tour de France victory. That triumph was Pogacar’s second overall win, but McNulty’s first Tour as part of his core support group.

According to Van Garderen: “Brandon told me a funny story. After his first Tour with Tadej in 2021, when Pogacar won, he gave his teammates a gift… Pogacar gave everyone a fancy Green Egg barbecue smoker.”

McNulty’s reaction provided the punchline: “Brandon said, ‘Wow, this is really nice… but I live in an apartment in Girona. I can’t use this thing!’”

Van Garderen also highlighted how Pogacar’s choices differ from more traditional Tour-winner gestures. “Some winners give cash or vacations — Cadel Evans, for example, did that in 2011. But Tadej, he’s a young guy at heart. He thought, ‘I love this, so everyone else will too.’ It’s thoughtful, it’s a little off the wall, and it’s something that brings people together.”

Across both stories — smokers after a dominant victory in 2021, coffee machines after a bruising defeat in 2023 — the theme is consistent: Pogacar prefers personal, slightly idiosyncratic gifts that reflect his own interests and acknowledge the riders who support him during the biggest race of the year.