“I didn’t expect him to win so quickly" - Tadej Pogacar shocked UAE leader Alexander Kristoff back at 2020 Tour de France

Alexander Kristoff started the 2020 Tour de France as one of the leaders for UAE Team Emirates - XRG, and won the opening stage in Nice taking the yellow jersey. He would've never expected his teammate Tadej Pogacar to be carrying the jersey into Paris that summer, and has talked about his surprise seeing his teammate evolve throughout the race into what was eventually a victory.

“In 2020, our first goal was top five because he had finished top three in the Vuelta the year before," Kristoff shared in the Domestique Hotseat podcast. "When he was in second or third place on the rest day, we had a meeting, and we said, ‘If he is third now, the goal should be first. And if he ends up third, it’s still two places better than fifth'.”

UAE at the time did not have a team that would be able to be of any competition to Visma. But with Primoz Roglic having a firm hold of the yellow jersey and a then having a time trial at the end of the race, the team never truly used their numbers to put pressure on their rivals, instead racing conservatively and trusting Roglic's time trialing abilities that would ordinarily see him beat any rival up the Planche des Belles Filles.

Hence Pogacar was able to ride behind the Visma train throughout most of the Tour, arriving to the time trial only 57 seconds behind. In a regular scenario that would've been enough, but Pogacar was not pressured by Visma. He did not have teammates able to ride with him deep into the mountains - his best placed teammate at the end was 40th place Jan Polanc, whilst Visma alone had four riders in the Top20.

Kristoff himself did not have much of a leadout, the team put its focus on chasing stage wins, which ultimately happened. But the yellow jersey became a dream after seeing how strong Pogacar was riding into the Alps on the final week. “We adjusted our goal halfway through the Tour to try to win it. It was a really crazy experience to be a part of. It was a really nice Tour and a really good memory.”

Pogacar made history, winning his first Tour de France on debut, the first of four he currently holds. That surprised Kristoff who went into the race as the experienced leader. “I didn’t expect him to win so quickly, but we saw how strong he was. In training camps, we saw how he smashed all the other climbers. We had many strong climbers at UAE when I was there, but in training they had no chance against this young Slovenian guy, so we knew he was a really big talent.”

The Norwegian experienced a career with many successes, including that Tour. Now retired, he holds almost 100 pro wins which includes two monuments at Milano-Sanremo and the Tour of Flanders. This came as a result of him being both a top sprinter and classics specialist throughout the 2010's - and a rider with incredible endurance and weather resistance.

Hence the list of rivals he had to contest with throughout his career was very large. “I had many good rivals. To say the best rivals, I would say Sagan, Cavendish and Kittel – but they beat me all the time, so I was not super happy when I saw them on the start line, because I knew it would be difficult to win.” He was never a World Champion, but also came very close, and specially had one of the hardest days of his career when he lost to Peter Sagan by mere inches close to home in Bergen, Norway, back in 2017.

“That was the year I could have done it. I was so close, I think I lost it by 3-5 centimeters, so it’s very narrow. You lose with so little after 260 kilometers, such a small margin… It’s a pity, but that’s life;" he laments.

"I really would have loved to have been world champion. I didn’t manage it, but I was still European champion and second in the Worlds, I had third place in the Olympics, so I had a medal in all those championships, which is still a nice thing to have.”lexan