Tadej Pogacar regains a key domestique as spring pressure mounts with Flanders and Roubaix

UAE Team Emirates - XRG is finally seeing daylight after a start to the season hampered by crashes. In that context, Tadej Pogacar regains a key piece for the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix: the return to racing of Mikkel Bjerg.

The Dane reappeared on Friday after a long spell away from competition, just in time to begin sharpening his form for the immediate target: the Tour of Flanders.

Bjerg had been sidelined for nearly two months after his crash at the Tour Down Under, where he suffered fractures in his hand and acromioclavicular joint. Although he was back on the bike relatively quickly, he missed the start of the European campaign.

He returned at the E3 Saxo Classic, where he began to regain race rhythm after weeks focused on rehab and training.

UAE has had to navigate an especially complicated start to the year. Bjerg’s absence was compounded by the crashes of Jay Vine and Jhonatan Narváez in Australia, as well as Tim Wellens’s heavy fall at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.

This series of setbacks forced the team to adjust its planning, including race cancellations and the promotion of a rider from its development structure. A situation that, according to Bjerg himself, has created a certain sense of urgency within the group.

The Dane summed it up clearly before his return: when absences pile up, any delay in recovery becomes a bigger problem for those still racing.

Despite this backdrop, the team has maintained an extremely high competitive level, largely thanks to Pogacar’s form. The Slovenian has delivered heavyweight wins at Strade Bianche and Milano–Sanremo, propping up the squad in a delicate spell.

Even so, the return of riders like Bjerg was eagerly awaited within the setup, both for sporting balance and workload distribution.

With the Monuments underway, his comeback is a key reinforcement for a UAE side that needs to recover personnel to sustain its spring dominance.