“Tadej normally loses less than 1%” - UAE performance chief reveals frightening reason Pogacar can still attack when rivals fade
CyclingFriday, 03 July 2026 at 17:30
Tadej Pogacar’s most damaging Tour de France attacks often come when everyone else should be running out of road, legs and oxygen. For UAE Team Emirates – XRG, that ability is not being treated as mystery or instinct alone.
Ahead of Pogacar’s bid for a fifth yellow jersey, UAE head of performance Jeroen Swart has offered a rare look at the physical trait behind the Slovenian’s late-race destruction. It comes down to durability: the ability to keep producing close to maximum power after a long, brutal workload.
The number behind Pogacar’s late attacks
In a detailed interview with CyclingNews, Swart explained why Pogacar can still launch and sustain those long-range attacks after the kind of mountain stages that strip most riders back from their best level.
“Tadej normally loses less than 1% of his fresh performance despite having done 4,500 kilojoules of work, which is why he's able to do these long attacks late in a race and get away and stay away,” said Swart. “Other riders are starting to have that fatigue and that's one of his key attributes, his ability to have exceptional durability at a very high workload. In Tadej's case, his durability is exceptional.”
From 2022 weakness to Tour-winning weapon
One of Pogacar’s most famous Tour defeats came on exactly the kind of day Swart is describing. In 2022, Jonas Vingegaard and Team Visma | Lease a Bike broke the race on the Col du Granon after a huge mountain stage, turning Pogacar’s aura of control into visible vulnerability.
Swart pointed directly to that stage when explaining how Pogacar’s durability has changed. “Previously, that was a weakness of Tadej,” he said. “When he lost the Tour de France in 2022, that was on a stage that exceeded 4,200 kilojoules of energy expenditure. So one thing that the strength work does is it maintains the ability of muscles to perform.”
The old blueprint was to make the day long, hard and chaotic, then see whether Pogacar could still respond when the race reached the final climb. In Swart’s telling, UAE have spent years working on the exact point where the Tour slipped away in 2022.
Why torque work matters late in the stage
The training detail behind that shift is not only about producing a sharper acceleration in the moment. Swart said UAE have used low-cadence torque work and strength training to help Pogacar keep his power available deep into the hardest stages, when repeated climbs and attacks have already emptied much of the field.
“If you lift heavy weights and then have to lift a very light weight repeatedly, your ability to lift that light weight repeatedly will be enhanced compared to if you hadn't lifted heavy weights in the first place,” he explained. “If you have some extra strength in those muscles, then you can harness that strength late in a race or late in a stage, and that improves the durability, the ability to perform close to your fresh level.”
Tadej Pogacar at the 2026 Tour de France team presentation
Fuel, fatigue and the final climb
Swart also pointed to fuelling as one of the major areas where modern performance has shifted. While most teams have moved towards far higher carbohydrate intake, he stressed that taking in more energy only matters if the body has been trained to use it properly. “You have to train the guts to absorb it,” he said, explaining that glucose and fructose absorption can both be trained and increased.
According to Swart, newer drink mixes with a changed glucose-to-fructose ratio have allowed riders to reach “110 to 120 grams an hour”, while lactate is also becoming part of the conversation as an additional fuel source.
“Fueling has become a huge factor in terms of the enhancement in performance that we've seen,” he said. “It's really a big change that's happened in the last 5 years, and we can't underestimate that contribution to the performances that we've seen.”
Pogacar’s attacks do not only hurt because of the watts he can produce fresh. They hurt because he can still find close to that level after 4,000 or 4,500 kilojoules, on the final climb, when others are already starting to pay for the day.
Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel, Florian Lipowitz, Paul Seixas and the rest of the GC field will still search for days hard enough to test him. The stage that broke Pogacar in 2022 now sits inside UAE’s explanation for why he keeps riding away.
Kieran WoodDeputy Editor-in-Chief
Kieran Wood is a sports journalist based in Wales and has been active in journalism since 2022. He regularly contributes to DartsNews.com and CyclingUpToDate.com, where he covers professional cycling and darts. In cycling, his work includes liveblogs from major races, including the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia, and La Vuelta a España, alongside race reports and analysis. He has also conducted interviews with professional riders.
His reporting spans the full racing calendar, from one-day classics to stage races, with a focus on accurate, real-time coverage and clear contextual analysis. For statistics, results, and historical context, he regularly uses resources such as ProCyclingStats. To support reporting on rider activity and training context where relevant, he also references Strava.
In his work, Kieran places strong emphasis on careful sourcing, editorial accuracy, and updating articles as new, verified information becomes available.
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- From what has been said, he is working for Pogi at the TDF. However, he will lead the team at the Vuelta Espana. And unless Pogi rides the Giro D'italia next year, he very well may lead there. He is only currently not leading a team at the TDF. And he seems 100% happy with that.md197504-07-2026
- Hey, you funny guy! LOL!MajorPayne04-07-2026
- It's a handful of seconds on day one of three week stage race.gooseflight04-07-2026
- I really enjoyed this new format to the TTT. Jonas in yellow, Tadej in the KOM jersey for fastest up the climb. Good ride by Remco and Ayuso. Paul Seixas did a lot of work to drive Decathlon and still finished with a decent time. Looking forward to him mixing it up with the big names in the mountains. Will Visma let the jersey go tomorrow?Pedalmasher04-07-2026
- All the teams first riders were in red today, if not they have not done their job. 20 kilometers means nothing for tomorrow - stop making a fool of youself. Congrats to Visma team and Jonas.Jakob04-07-2026
- Tomorrow Pogi needs to attack early because Vingegaard always has problems if he went deep into the red the day before. I guarantee if there are good UAE tactics and good leadout, that Pogi will drop Jonas tomorrow and I hope for an offensive Seixas also.mus-musculuspeedypogigonzales04-07-2026
- Losing more than 1 minute after one stage. Not good, especially when he's not even the tier one climber. Movistar can salvage the Tour by targeting stage hunting instead sacrificing riders to protect the GC goal. It's gone, baby, gone.
KerisVroom04-07-2026 - First fact: Uijtdebroeks forced an early exit from Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe at the end of 2023. He was frustrated by a lack of guaranteed Grand Tour starts??? Second fact: Uijtdebroeks terminated his contract with Visma-Lease a Bike two years early to sign a four-year deal with the Movistar. The same BS, because Visma could not guarantee him the Grand Tour racing program he needed. Third fact: Today Uijtdebroeks blew up, but he will say it was Movistars fault. Fourth fact: Uijtdebroeks will be looking for a new team.mus-musculuspeedypogigonzales04-07-2026
- LOL!
Rafionain-Glas04-07-2026 - Cian Uijdtebroeks "they dropped me, they bullied me"Rafionain-Glas04-07-2026
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