Nils Politt on Tadej Pogacar and UAE's 'blacklist': "You don’t want to be on that list"

Nils Politt recently went on a podcast and has given a lot of insight on Tadej Pogacar and UAE Team Emirates' Tour de France. A lot of interesting statements were issued by the German but alongside them some that some riders many not be so fond of, which is that the team has a blacklist of riders who are not friends of the team.

"Tadej and Remco like each other, both on and off the bike. They are friends, which isn’t the case with Vingegaard. Tadej and Jonas respect each other but don’t necessarily like each other," Politt said in the Schlag & Fertig podcast. "In the peloton, you have friends and riders you’re not so fond of. On our team bus, there’s also a list of riders who are friends and a blacklist. You don’t want to be on that list".  Although this won't necessarily explain some of UAE's tactics during the Tour, it hints at the existence of personal reasons to chase down breakaways. 

Often during the Tour, riders of other teams were often frustrated at the lack of opportunities to win and specially lack of freedom given to breakaways - something that is now more common during the year as well. The Slovenian ended up winning six stages. After winning both summit finishes in the Pyrenees ambitions to win stages were not as sharp to win stages. The German says that on stage 20 there was even an attempt to give freedom to other riders: "We had prepared for that stage very intensively. The team wanted to win there, but Tadej said in the morning on the bus: 'We’ve already won four stages. If we win this one too, they’re going to get angry with us.'"

In the end the breakaway was controlled and a GC battle ensured on the final climb. Jonas Vingegaard attacked the climb hard, but Pogacar didn't give any favours to the Dane. "I told him that if you can win a stage, you should just do it. Tadej hesitated, so we sent Marc Soler ahead. But Evenepoel’s team closed it down. I genuinely think Tadej would have let him win if they had been ahead together, but there’s no mercy for Vingegaard".

"With Tadej, you can’t come up with a strategy. You devise a plan, but on the bike, he wants you to go even faster," Politt says. "But you can’t go any faster. 'Four minutes, give it everything you’ve got!' But the others in your wheel still have to keep going, you know. Fortunately, I’ve also managed to slow him down a few times." However no-one could slow him down on Plateau de Beille where he gained meaningful time on his rivals but above all set power numbers that were previously unseen in pro cycling, according to estimations (which also saw Vingegaard and even Remco Evenepoel do career-best efforts):

"That Tadej went minutes faster than Pantani, you can’t really compare that anymore. Our bikes are now 6.8 kilos, back then they were 9 kilos. All our equipment is tested to ensure it’s the fastest: helmets, socks, base layers... That wasn’t the case before;" Politt argues. "People don’t realize what we do for it and that what happened in the past is really no longer possible. We have to be available for doping checks literally all day long, and in the Tour, Tadej was tested every day and sometimes even twice a day. They would come into the bus before a stage, where he had to provide a sample. An intrusion into privacy. But the questions are part of it, and we know that too."

Politt also commented on former teammate Primoz Roglic who had to abandon the race due to another crash. Politt was not surprised at the outcome of the Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe's leader: "He’s ridden the Tour six times and has crashed out three times. His crashes are, of course, widely covered, and there wasn’t much he could do about this one in the Tour. But there are crashes of his that make us all wonder what he’s doing. In that second week, 160 riders passed through that corner without any issues, and he crashes".