"Roubaix is one of the races high on his wish list" - Tadej Pogacar has 'Hell of the North' as a priority to complete career

Paris-Roubaix and Milano-Sanremo are the two monuments that Tadej Pogacar hasn't yet won in his career and are potentially the biggest goals he has remaining. UAE Team Emirates - XRG will go all-out to win both and certainly has a strong team around him, including Tim Wellens who is racing at his very best level.

The veteran won the Belgian national championships earlier this summer, and then besides being Pogacar's right-hand man at the Tour, he also won his very own stage from a breakaway in Carcassonne.

“I can wear that beautiful Belgian jersey every day in training, so it’s been a magnificent year,” Wellens said in words to In de Leiderstrui. “Not much has changed, but I did realize how important it is to win a stage in the Tour de France. In that Belgian jersey. It’s a completely different level, and I underestimated how important that was.”

Wellens is a rider that has won a lot in the past, but perhaps his level of popularity was never as big as in this summer. “I got home and I had the impression everyone knew me, which wasn’t the case before,” he explained. “In race kit, that is. People stop me in training for a photo and that was new. I think that mostly came from the Tour, especially for people who watch less cycling. For me, it’s been a pleasant experience.”

Wellens is more of a hilly classics specialist, but he knows how to ride the cobbles and his closeness to Pogacar means that he will be a certain figure at next year's Roubaix next to the World Champion. Only two weeks ago, the duo were amongst the four riders who made the trip to northern France to test material.

“We’ve already been testing and that was hugely educational: tires, bikes, we tested all kinds of things," he shares. It is a necessary part of equipment testing, something which is key in a race where bikes go through more tension than perhaps any other race on the calendar. "We learned a lot from it, and it was necessary that we did it".

And Roubaix is a big goal, perhaps the biggest of them all even, taking into consideration how in his debut last year, Pogacar rode to second place, and a victory looked to be well within reach. “Tadej still wants to win many more races, but Roubaix is one of the races high on his wish list," Wellens assures.