"It makes me sick sometimes" - Belgian legend believes hype surrounding Tadej Pogacar's Paris-Roubaix start highlights everything wrong with modern cycling

After months of speculation, the official announcement came from UAE Team Emirates - XRG earlier this week. Tadej Pogacar will ride Paris-Roubaix for the first time in his illustrious career in 2025. Ever since, the cycling world has been sent into a frenzy by thought of the reigning Tour de France champion competing on the iconic cobbles, but for one legendary figure of the sport, the hype is a little overblown.

"I think it’s all quite normal," says the now-77-year-old Belgian icon, Roger De Vlaeminck, himself a four-time winner of Paris-Roubaix back in the 70s. According to De Vlaeminck, Pogacar's decision to skip his initially planned appearances at the E3 Saxo Classic and Gent Wevelgem in order to focus on Paris-Roubaix, only goes to show the stark difference between the riders of his generation and those competing in the current peloton.

"In our time, we rode all the races, didn’t we? I raced at least 120 events, about 15 cyclo-cross races, and some six-day races," explains the legendary figure in conversation with Sporza. "I personally won Tirreno-Adriatico six times and Milan-Sanremo three times during those years. Why couldn’t that happen now? Do the riders now fear burning out too quickly? Have I burned out, maybe?"

"What’s going on with these riders? They earn so much more money, but they shouldn’t say it’s too much of a burden," continues De Vlaeminck with frustration, citing the recent edition of Milano-Sanremo as another example of the differences between yesteryear and today. "Mathieu van der Poel wins Milano-Sanremo, but he was in the peloton for 250 kilometres, right? And Filippo Ganna got dropped three times and came back because the others slowed down. Now, with Ganna, you have one Italian at the top level, and he’s not a superhero. In my time, there were ten Italians at the very top."

"Write this down properly," De Vlaeminck adds. "The riders don’t make the choices; it’s the bosses around them who do. We raced everything. Can you win 512 races like I did in this day and age? Why not? Of course not, if you only race 400. We made a good living too, but we had to race a lot of events to earn it. It makes me sick sometimes."

Finally, there has been a lot of comparisons drawn between Pogacar and the great Eddy Merckx over the last couple of years. According to De Vlaeminck, who race against Merckx during his own career, the current world champion should consider himself lucky to have been born in a different generation to the legendary 'Cannibal'. "Man, I know how fast Eddy could ride," concludes the 77-year-old. "I’ve often ridden behind him with fear."