"I know how UAE works" - Could Marc Hirschi's inside knowledge be key to defeating Tadej Pogacar this Spring?
Cycling
When looking for riders to potentially challenge Tadej Pogacar this Spring, the Slovenian's former UAE Team Emirates - XRG teammate Marc Hirschi is rightly quite high up the list. Now riding for the Tudor Pro Cycling Team and part of a dual-pronged Classics attack with Julian Alaphilippe, could Hirschi's inside knowledge from his time at UAE be key?
"It will be crazy to be Tadej's competitor," previews the 26-year-old Swiss in comments collected by Wieler Revue, admitting it will be difficult to end up getting the better of his former teammate in 2025. "Can he be beaten? He shows few weaknesses, but we will try. It is also difficult for him to always be at such a high level. Everyone expects him to win. It is news if he doesn't."
As mentioned though, the fact Hirschi has spent the last four seasons alongside Pogacar, starring in one-day races for UAE Team Emirates could give the Swiss an inside knowledge not many of the world champion's rivals have. "It can be an advantage that I know how UAE works, but when Tadej is there the tactics are clear to everyone," Hirschi assesses honestly. "In smaller races I can maybe benefit because I know how UAE team leaders think, but in big races with Tadej it's all about him and you just have to hope that you can follow."
With Hirschi and the aforementioned Alaphilippe though, Tudor certainly have two genuine contenders for the big one-day races in 2025. "We are the same type of rider, but to beat someone like Pogacar we will have to make each other better and we need each other. When I signed my contract with Tudor Pro Cycling I didn't know that Julian would come, but the situation is completely different than at UAE," says Hirschi, who saw his opportunities somewhat limited at his former team thanks to the brilliance of Pogacar. "I'm back with my old coach Sebastian Deckert. I worked with him at Team Sunweb. He was my coach when I won a stage in the Tour de France in 2020. And he also supported me when I became world champion among the U23s in 2018. He was an important reason for choosing Tudor. Sebastian knows exactly which training sessions work for me and what my character is like."
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- i wouldn't count Pogi out. Low probability of a win, but not impossiblemobk01-04-2025
- Right now it doesn't seem that his legs are there or that his head is in the racevappaxbipmv01-04-2025
- would have been nice to hear exactly WHY he thinks pog has zero chance in some greater detail. i mean, tend to agree that his chances aren’t GREAT, but some explanation from the expert with an opinion would be nice. MINE is that, in spite of the recon he did where tadej concluded that the course “wasn’t that hard” i think that doing the full route at full gas is really going to beat up pogacar’s 145lb body, to a degree that he maybe isn’t expecting. but hey, we’ll see in a couple weeks. like everyone else, i do think it’s supercool that he’s going.OCexile01-04-2025
- Go back to that era and look at the lousy mechanicals he's had at Paris-Roubaix. Take those away, maybe he has another Monument, Van der Poel has one less, and suddenly all the rules change. Those mechanicals preceded his awful crashes - and you're right, that Tour was amazing. Ventoux, TT, and Champs-Elysees?! Something that Pogacar and Van der Poel can't do, just Wout. It still amazes me.RidesHills01-04-2025
- Oh, the impossibility of this kind of comparison. A pre-WW2 Binda had amazing statistics, and that was one era. During what I think of as the romantic era, Poulidor had an incredible run at the Tour without winning, and Bobet won some grand tours and some Monuments. In this modern era (for me: after Hinault), we've had multiple Monument winners win a grand tour (such as Valverde and Kelly, with Kelly the better rider in general), and then we've got someone like Roglic, the true GC rider. Sure there was a Monument that was kind of a fluke (both Pogacar and Hirschi might have won, and twitchy Alaphilippe deserved relegation), but what matters are the 5 grand tours and all these wins across the 1 week GC races except for the Tour de Suisse (you'd think he'd race it to get the set of them all). In this era, since 2000 or so, maybe he meets the description as best non-Tour winner. How many GC riders have these wins and not the Tour? To compare to other eras really is not possible. He's his own unique rider, and it's been amazing watching him for the past many years. That's about all we can say.RidesHills01-04-2025
- Ease up on a brother!bobo01-04-2025
- Primoz finds ways to win. Too bad he'll never take Tour de France.awp01-04-2025
- I don't think I would ever count Wout van Aert out of a race if his head is in it. He is a serious talent.awp01-04-2025
- He's a great rider for sure, not sure if he the best to never win the Tour though.awp01-04-2025
- Hard to imagine that his confidence - that imperious flow state that great athletes operate in - hasn't been affected. But that is a different dynamic than the one you described. He has not become hesitant because he is fixated on his rival. He has suffered multiple traumatic injuries, and I have no doubt he is still 1% off both mentally and physically as a result. Football (both kinds) and basketball players who blow out knees go through a predictable cycle in which they are reluctant to do max efforts even after their doctors have cleared them. I myself went though a small version of that after a back injury. It's just hard once you no longer know where the line is. We saw in his TT a couple weeks ago that he still has power, and for all the hand wringing he is still finishing in the top 10-20 of big races. But as we have seen with others, getting *all* the way back is not assured. I'm not ready to say he is done, but few riders who have been hurt as often and as badly as him remain at the top.MidnightRider01-04-2025