Tadej Pogacar's coach Jeroen Swart: "Not only is he incredibly gifted physically, he’s also incredibly strong mentally and emotionally"

Tadej Pogacar is the face of the new generation in cycling and although it won't last forever, what the current World Champion and Tour de France leader has already achieved is beyond every expectation. Behind many of the results is his current coach Jeroen Swart who has described him and many other topics, including the changes in nutrition over the past few years.

"We’re very lucky with Tadej. Not only is he incredibly gifted physically, he’s also incredibly strong mentally and emotionally," Swart said in an interview with Bicycling. "He’s the best kind of rider to have in a team. He’s engaging, with staff and other riders. He’s demanding, but he’s never a prima donna. He’s level-headed and down to earth." Swart has nothing but complements on who he considers to be a true leader.

"As an example, he doesn’t feel he should have better equipment than anyone else. If we present him with a lighter version of a frame, his first question is “when are the other riders getting this frame?” That motivates everyone. When it comes to tactics, he never expects everyone to just help him win races – he wants other riders to win, too. He encourages the other riders".

At UAE Team Emirates - XRG the budget to sign big riders is high, but overall the team has done an exceptional job at maintaining a team with such a large amount of potential leaders happy. Most riders have gotten their chances of leading races throughout the year, even those who regularly race as domestiques.

However Pogacar, racing and winning the way he does, naturally has raised many questions over the years, specially taking into consideration the climbing performances of the past few years that increasingly get more and more impressive. Swart believes however that at a physiological level, today's pro cyclists are close to achieving the best a human being is capable of on a bike.

"Physically, some areas are topping out. Like nutrition – we used to think that the maximum gut absorption rate for monosaccharides or sugars was 80g an hour; now we’re seeing evidence emerging that it’s around 110g per hour," he explains.

"That’s one of the reasons the guys are going so fast from the gun, and producing performances on the final climb that are mind-blowing: a large part of it has to do with nutrition. When we started in 2019, we were doing 40- to 60g, and pushing the guys to do 80g at key moments in the stage. Now it’s 110g from the start, and boom". 

In addition to nutrition which is fully within Swart's realm of guidance within the team, the introduction of new training methods has also provided notable benefits he explains. "Last year, after lots of research, we introduced heat training, which gave our riders another massive performance gain. If we see similar innovations coming, there’s always scope to push things further".