"It made me feel like I didn't deserve to be here": Urska Zigart admits struggles with self-perception before her 2025 breakthrough

Urksa Zigart has had a breakthrough 2025 season with runner-up result in the general classification of Tour de Romandie Féminin, a podium at the Trofeo Tessile & Moda, top-5 at Tour de Suisse Women and a top-10 overall at Giro d'Italia Women. With a bit of bitterness in tone, people finally begin to recognize the 29-year-old's climbing talent - and not just for her relationships with men cycling's superstar Tadej Pogacar.

Yet, her beginnings to the sport were way more modest. During a turbulent period of transferring from elementary to high school, the young Zigart needed to find a certainty in life. And she achieved so through a bicycle. Or more precisely her mother's old spinning bike, at least until she bought Urska a real bicycle.

"I really didn't know anything about cycling at first. Only how to pedal," Urska Zigart told TV 2 Sport about the humble origins of her cycling career. And she turned out to be good enough to get recruited by BTC City Ljubljana, Slovenia's biggest women's team.

Despite having finished only one race - the National Championships - in her debut season of 2015, Urska continued to hone her skills. That relentless work eventually culminated in a WorldTour contract with Team BikeExchange five years later, 2021. And further five years down the road, she's become a serious GC contender at Grand Tours.

However, this is not so crucial for Urska Zigart, who, even with her growing ambitions, values ​​other things more: "For me, the most important thing is the process of getting better that drives me. Not just the results," she says, "but yeah, it could be really cool to win this year."

Her only professional victory outside National Championships came all the way back in 2021 during her debut season with Jayco at Vuelta Comunitat Valenciana Feminas.

Having already mentioned on the topic of Zigart's perception as a performance athlete, the struggles of establishing her own image besides that of Tadej Pogacar's partner has long bothered the Slovenian. "It may have made me feel like I didn't deserve to be here. But deep down I know that's not true. I've worked hard myself," Zigart says.

"Maybe from the outside it looks like I'm very extroverted and confident, but outside the spotlight I'm not," she says about the contrast between the professional facade and the private doubts.

Speaking of the most famous Slovenian couple, back when Urska joined BTC City Ljubljana, she would've never imagined that she'd find a partner in the same club as Pogacar has made his baby steps in professional cycling with the team based in Slovenian's capital city as well. And since then, the two have together witnessed the growth of women's cycling up close.

"He has seen how it was before and the development that has happened. He is very aware and aware of how far women's cycling has come, and I think that makes him even more supportive. Because he knows that it is not something you can take for granted," says Urska Zigart. "And he really likes to watch [races], even though there are differences in the way the women and men race. He finds the unpredictability quite cool."