"I find it stressful to watch Tadej's races" - Urska Zigart admits she's anxious whenever Tadej Pogacar races

Urska Zigart is a five-time national champion (4x time trial). But the 27-year-old Slovenian who races for Liv AlUla Jayco is more known as 'Tadej Pogacar's partner'. Despite Zigart's relatively successful professional career - she became double Slovenian champion in June - most interviews end at Tadej Pogacar one way or another. And Zigart has to learn with that as she speaks about her life with the Slovenian phenomenon quite openly.

Last year, both Pogacar and Zigart became Slovenian champions against the clock: "We could warm up together, with the same people who guided us. And the time trial was also on the same course. Beforehand we had hoped that we could both win. With me that is always a bit more doubtful than with Tadej," she confides in an interview for Het Nieuwsblad.

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One of the advantages of both partners being professional cyclists is the possibility to attend some of the training camps together. "For many riders, an altitude training camp is a burden, because it takes them away from friends and family even more often. We are lucky that we can do it together. Now it was in Isola 2000, near our house in Monaco. Of course, we each followed our own training schedule, so it wasn’t as nice as being at home together. But we have to seize every moment together."

"I find it stressful to watch Tadej's races," she admits. "If I have to race myself, I only see the summary afterwards and I already know that everything went well along the way."

In May, she ended up missing most of her fiancée's Giro d'Italia domination. "I also stuffed Tadej's Giro well. I raced the Itzulia Basque Country myself and when that was over, I visited family in Slovenia, where I had not been for six months."

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