Tadej Pogacar shrugs off illness towards Milano-Sanremo: "I’ve raced with the flu before, it doesn’t change much"

UAE Team Emirates depart to tomorrow's Milano-Sanremo with high ambitions as they carry the hopes of Tadej Pogacar into a possible victory. They will likely be the team with most interest in making the race hard, and Pogacar himself will take to the start in Milano with an eye on the win despite recent illness.

"You can hear that I’m also not 100 percent with my nose. When I came home from Tirreno-Adriatico, I could barely go on the bike for three days. But yesterday and today I started to do some work on the bike and I feel ok, so I think for tomorrow it should be fine," Pogacar said in a pre-race interview.

"When you ride every day in cold air, going full gas on Carpegna, doing interviews afterwards in a tent at 5°C, you can get sick, it’s obvious," he added. Over the course of last week, dozens of riders fell ill during Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico. Although no positive Covid-19 tests were reported, the weather has caused serious damage in the peloton as several of the main favourites for Milano-Sanremo - such as Julian Alaphilippe, Sonny Colbrelli, Caleb Ewan and Jasper Stuyven - have all had to forego their presence in the race.

Pogacar shrugged the seriousness of his illness however: "But it’s just a blocked nose, so I don’t think it’s going to affect the condition of the legs. I’ve raced with the flu before, it doesn’t change much."

"When I did it the first time, it was after the Covid lockdown and all this. It was in August, it was quite hot, and it was a different course from the start to the sea. But it was the same final, and a similar style of race. I think I learned a lot from the first time, and tomorrow we will see if I learned something or not," he mentions. The Slovenian made his debut in 2020 where he finished on the 12th spot, he will be hoping to improve on that result with his existing experience.

"It’s in a class of its own, I think. It’s 300k long and it can be pretty boring if you don’t make the race exciting yourself. The final is more or less always the same - Cipressa and Poggio. The Poggio is always all-out, six minutes. You really need to come as fresh as possible, which is hard after so many kilometers," he concluded.

UAE will not only have Pogacar, but also Alessandro Covi as a potential win candidate. With the likes of Davide Formolo, Diego Ulissi and Jan Polanc also in the team, the team is sure to be attacking the race hard once it reaches the climbs.