Joxean Matxin on how he helped UAE make Tadej Pogacar a champion: "We couldn’t just treat them as young riders. We had to treat them like champions from the word go"

Tadej Pogacar joined UAE Team Emirates in 2019 and within one month of racing won his first stage-race. Joxean Matxin, who was a pivotal part of his signing and development early on, tells how he encouraged the team to treat him as a leader right from his debut and how that helped him grow into the champion he is today.

“This is UAE Team Emirates, not Pogi Team. In the sense that he’s the number one in the world, we’d be the first to say it and to value him and to protect him and we’re very proud of him. But be it riders or staff, we try to ensure that everybody matters and that no given soigneur, say, is more important than another soigneur," Joxean Matxin told Cyclingnews. "We cover and work for each other, and to stick with the example of the soigneurs for a moment, it works both ways." Nowadays, UAE is already said to be the team with the highest budget in the peloton, but certainly the one stacked with the most talent - both when it comes to experienced and young riders.

Pogacar is only 25 but has already achieved more in his career than 99% pro cyclists, and shows only signs of improving until now. Matxin tells of that 2019 year where the Slovenian soared through the ranks of cycling: "What I said was basically that we couldn’t just treat them as young riders. We had to treat them like champions from the word go and change their race programmes accordingly. So we brought Tadej into some new races on the programme like the Volta a Algarve and California, which he won, and then put him in Itzulia Basque Country – which he didn’t win, but he was working for Dan Martin, and he might have won it if he hadn’t been doing that."

He later on raced the Vuelta a España where he finished third in the overall classification and won three stages. This incredible performance saw the team push him a lever higher in 2020 when he made his debut at the Tour de France and immediately conquered the yellow jersey. "Then in 2020, when the normal thing would have been to take him to the Vuelta or Giro d’Italia to fight for that, we raised the bar again and put him in the Tour de France straightaway.”