"It’s better to have a strong Pogacar" - Ben Healy's success might be in part due to World Champion's tactics, says EF's Jonathan Vaughters

Tadej Pogacar is the great dominator of current professional cycling. But to what degree do his and UAE Team Emirates - XRG's tactics benefit other riders? EF Education-EasyPost manager Jonathan Vaughters believes that going to the limit for hours on end is greatly beneficial to Ben Healy, who has partly had success due to this new way of racing the big events.

“The big races, I give us a ten out of ten. The smaller ones, probably more like a five," Vaughters said in the Domestique Hotseat podcast. “We’re the youngest team in the WorldTour". Richard Carapaz finishing third at the Giro d'Italia, Neilson Powless winning Dwars door Vlaanderen ahead of three Visma riders and the many performances of Ben Healy throughout the year were the great highlights.

Healy specifically had a magical season, finishing fourth at Strade Bianche, winning a stage at Itzulia Basque Country, fifth at Flèche Wallonne, third at Liège-Bastogne-Liège... Winning a stage, spending days in the yellow jersey and finishing ninth at the Tour de France; and then still joining Tadej Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel on the podium of the World Championships. It would've been hard to ask for more from the Irishman, who led the team successfully this year.

At the Tour he rode to a breakthrough Top10 spot, racing in his own way. “He did that by losing, you know, 14 minutes on Hautacam and then gaining back four minutes in breakaways. He did it by racing GC in a way nobody else was racing it. He rode both the time trials easy in the Tour de France. Like took them as like kind of rest days".

“But you don’t do that if you’re really riding GC (he means ordinarily you don't, ed.). Two days later, he’d be in a breakaway and he’d get five minutes. Well, you’re not going to get five minutes in the time trial. To take that away from him and say 'no, we’re going to put seven guys around you. You’re never going to touch the wind'. And then you’re just going to have to go up hills really fast and go really fast in the TT. I don’t know if that’s really his style of racing. I’m not really sure. But I don’t think it is honestly.”

Looking back at where he performed in the classics: Strade Bianche, Fléche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and World Championships. All four races won by Tadej Pogacar, and besides Liège, all opened up very early. The 25-year old has unusually good endurance which has him stand apart in the long races of attrition, and this is a perfect fit with how UAE is currently racing with the World Champion.

"This highly attrition based race that basically forces everyone to just ride flat out for hours on end [...] Pogacar likes his team to basically like force it into a race of attrition, that like there’s only 10 people left by the time Pogacar actually attacks. By the time he does that, there’s only 10 or 15 riders left, if that many. When he goes away, well, like there’s no team to chase. There’s just a bunch of individual riders that all consider them leaders themselves. They’re like 'well, I’m not going to chase, you chase'".

But Healy can't realistically beat Pogacar, yet. But he has ridden to monuments and World Championship podiums, which are world-class results that he might not have otherwise achieved. “We’re all waiting for Pogacar to get tired or bored or retire. But I don’t know if like, that’s a good thing for Ben. I feel like for Ben, it’s better to have a strong Pogacar," Vaughters argues.

And the American believes that when Pogacar makes a mistake or has an off day, Healy can take advantage of it and be the one in the top step. “One of these days he’s gonna like mess up his feeding a little bit or he’s gonna have a little bit of a head cold or whatever it is.”