"He’s just way more talented than the rest of us" - Volta a Catalunya peloton rues lack of opportunities due to Tadej Pogacar's overwhelming dominance

Tadej Pogacar won all three mountain stages of the Volta a Catalunya without direct competition this week and whilst that provides a different kind of spectacle, in the peloton many rue the lack of opportunities that exist due to riders like him and other generational talents that seem to come around more and more often.

“For sure I cannot compete and I don’t think any rider here can compete with him. Something happened in the last two years and the gap has increased further," Guillaume Martin told CyclingWeekly. “I remember 2020, just after Covid, and I could still compete with these guys but they have grown up and I have stayed at my level. I have never seen anything like this in my career."

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The level currently is quite superior to that of previous years, every year riders and teams take their preparation to an even higher level and it leaves other figures who are not able to evolve the same way to stagnate results wise. Martin, who sprinted alongside Pogacar and Primoz Roglic in a summit finish of the Tour de France back in 2020, has not won since the 2022 Tour de l'Ain and is forced to hunt breakaways to try and win stages at the highest level currently despite having the same level.

“Before I always used to ride races to win, but now to be perfectly honest I don’t see how it could be possible when you are racing against a rider like that," the Frenchman admits, impactfully. What has happened in Catalunya this week is a prime example of how a sole rider can change the entire outlook of the race. "So far in this race, if he wanted to, he could have had a chance to win in every stage. That’s pretty scary, but what can you do if someone is in their own league? He is one extra zone above us.”

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Unfortunately for the 30-year old this is unlikely to stop, and more talents are likely to appear over the coming years. In a rather ironic way, Martin thanks that there is at least one rider who can match Pogacar (that being Jonas Vingegaard): “Luckily there are two of them - if there was only one it would be even worse."

"But the way they ride is that they want to win everything. I can understand that it can be a bit boring for the spectators, but we try everything to win as well. It’s just they don’t let us win anything," the Cofidis rider laments.

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The American outlet also shared the words of Team Visma | Lease a Bike rider Attila Valter, who sums up quite well the overall feeling in the peloton: “He is playing with us and the bunch. It’s true what Landa said: It’s not that he’s training more or doing anything better, but everyone lives from their own talent and he’s just way more talented than the rest of us.”

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