Just a ride for fun? Pogacar's Paris-Roubaix recon was 165 kilometers long and included all cobbled sectors team DS tells
Cycling
UAE Team Emirates - XRG will not publicly say that Tadej Pogacar will ride Paris-Roubaix this year but almost all signs point towards it. He recently did a recon ride throughout the north of France and the team DS that rode with him and Tim Wellens reveals that the ride was a full recon of the 2025 route.
"This weekend in the North was already planned since December, at the team's training camp in Spain. Tim Wellens was also there, while Antonio Morgado and Nill Politt could not accompany us due to physical problems," Fabio Baldato shared with Gazzetta dello Sport.
Nevertheless the trip was made. On Saturday Pogacar and Tim Wellens explored the route of the Tour of Flanders and in Sunday they rode the route of Paris-Roubaix. This wasn't anticipated, and perhaps only made public as they were spotted on Sunday afternoon on French soil. The fact that only two riders rode this recon is a very big point towards the World Champion's potential ambitions to race it later this spring.
Pogacar will race the UAE Tour and then his spring will consist of nothing but one-day races. Amongst these are Milano-Sanremo and Tour of Flanders, but also the Ardennes classics. There would be worries about the risk of a big crash of injury in Roubaix, but simultaneously Pogacar has proven to be a great bike handler and a rider who is capable of winning on every single terrain.
Joxean Matxin told journalist Daniel Benson that the race continues to be off his schedule, but we can quickly remember Wout van Aert's case with the cyclocross World Championships - where the Belgian was not publicly announced to ride it until a week before, and he was given the freedom to make the decision whenever he wanted. This allowed him to not have the pressure and media attention that would otherwise put higher pressure and expectations on his shoulders.
"Sunday in Roubaix was another intense training session, about 165 km. We entered the course two kilometers before the first cobblestone section and covered all the cobblestones, including the 'five stars' such as Mons-en-Pévèle or Carrefour de l'Arbre, and also the small modifications before Arenberg," Baldato explained.
"We got as far as the velodrome in Roubaix, but it was closed and we couldn't get in. Tadej was lively, as always. He had a lot of fun. He is a total cyclist, but someone with his characteristics had never seen him ride so hard on the stones."
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More videos from Pogačar Roubaix recon, as he rode not only Arenberg, but all the Paris Roubaix sectors. 😍 pic.twitter.com/up2shzPYn7
— Lukáš Ronald Lukács (@lucasaganronald) February 11, 2025
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- Exactly Tadej, the cancer of modern society. Full of good-for-nothing people who gain visibility and importance on social media mocking, humiliating (and worse things) to earn money. But it's the follower's fault, no followers, no "influencers".
maria2024202405-04-2025 - Great commentCaralladas05-04-2025
- i’m such a sucker for those group-hug, happy ending moments between competitors, largely because it’s so WASN’T that way in my younger, stronger days. (on that note, i have this hope that somewhere down the road, maybe fifteen or twenty years, a middle aged wout and mathieu will go for a pleasure ride together in flanders, and reminisce about the days when they were the young, strong monsters that stalked the cobbles.)OCexile05-04-2025
- Just like Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Ronde van Vlaanderen was/is NOT on MAX. Get your facts straight.Ben04-04-2025
- You might bounce more for the same power, but not the same speed. Sending 20 kgs over a jump at 20 kph will fly just as far as 10 kgs at the same speed. Again, Galileo demonstrated this.acem8204-04-2025
- So, you're saying that doing a bunch of small hops on a bike is easier if you're heavier? Why do people buy lighter bikes, then? Why do they generally feel better and faster? An appeal to "rhythm" is not helpful either, as the right "rhythm" might be on the lighter or heavier side of things, and as it varies, it's likely a wash either way. Then we are left with the physics truth that it takes less power to lift lighter things than heavier things.acem8204-04-2025
- No, weight doesn't affect the ability to go into the wind at all. It's all CdA vs power at that point. For example, it's "obvious" that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter one. But, absent wind resistance, it's not true (Galileo demonstrated this). An appeal to "obviousness" doesn't matter when the physics is clear. And yes, you have to be able to hold everything else constant, or you can't determine anything! So, imagine a 300 watt rider at 80 kgs with a CdA of 2.0, then imagine that same rider at 70 kgs with a CdA of 2.0. (Assume ideal tire pressure for both, same bike.) Which one can ride over a bumpy road fastest? The lighter one, as he doesn't have to lift as much. That's also why when they test bikes on 5 star cobbled sectors, the MTB goes faster than even a cobble-build road bike. Even though rolling resistance is higher on a flat road, and the CdA is junk, it smooths out the cobbles, allowing the person to not lift as much as they otherwise would.acem8204-04-2025
- I disagree. If you have lower weight, you will bounce more at the same speed, meaning that you will spend more time in the air and shorter time on the ground, as a consequence, when you are on the ground you have to produce more force for the same speedvappaxbipmv04-04-2025
- That’s not quite true, even steep climbs and sudden gradient changes can be considered as remaining tangential to the wheel whereas the occasional dip between cobbles a wheel drops into cannot, as such riding over cobbles can become like a permanent surmounting of small obstacles that hit back into your wheel slowing you drastically if you don’t have the right rhythm to “fly” on the mounds, here again the greater the momentum the less these obstacles reduce your speed. But, it is but one factor, you cannot decide on this alone. Like with natural surface ripple formation on desert tracks used by vehicles, there is an optimal speed range to efficiently pass over such surfaces, too fast or slow and your car gets shaken to pieces from the “harmonics” in the vibrations caused. Pretty sure the same applies to riding on cobbles.Mistermaumau04-04-2025
- I am saying I have an open mind at the moment for your cobbles theory but cannot agree with your wind statement (and by extrapolation sprinting since that implies speeds where wind is by far the limiting factor). Had you argued all things not being equal I could have agreed with you but if we thus assume 2 objets of the same size and speed but with differing weights, it is completely obvious that the lighter one will suffer faster in the wind. Extrapolate to the extreme, drop stuff off cliffs or just remember your momentum equations to verify. Now, obviously in real life we have to assume riders of different weights won’t have the same wind hitting surface but you cannot generalise at all then as you can have very unaerodynamic light riders and very aerodynamic heavy ones because it isn’t weight that defines CdA, Teslas have an incredible CdA and are ridiculously heavy, and someone like Harry Levreyssen is a Tesla in cycling.Mistermaumau04-04-2025