"The day after the Tour de France I was completely destroyed" - No regrets for Tadej Pogacar after Paris Olympic snub

2024 has been the year of Tadej Pogacar. After a break from racing following his Tour de France triumph however, the UAE Team Emirates is a little unsure of his form heading back into the action at GP Quebec on the 13th of September.

"Quebec is quite an open race but in the past, the attacks didn’t work very well and a lot of times it comes to the sprint, but the sprint is super hard," previews Pogacar in his pre-race press conference, in quotes collected by Eurosport. "But here we have a strong team so let’s see. I think we can make a hard race and we’ll see how the legs are turning if I can attack or just wait for the sprint."

Whilst ordinarily, Pogacar would be the almost unquestioned favourite wherever he turns up to race, given his lengthy post-Tour de France layoff, the Slovenian isn't so certain he'll be at his very best this time around. “Normally, after a long period of training, the first race is not so good," the Slovenian admits honestly. "But I saw at the beginning of the year for Strade Bianche how the preparation was for that race and I think I can be pretty decent in Quebec, better than previous years after the long period of no racing but you never know."

One of the reasons it's been so long since Pogacar pinned on a race number, was that he opted against competing at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, despite some outside pressures to compete. "I didn’t like a lot of people pushing me to go to the Olympics, calling me and saying that ‘I should be there, I could get an easy medal’,” he recalls. “Nothing is easy in cycling, especially the Olympic Games on this kind of parcours. I think I made the right decision because the day after the Tour de France I was completely destroyed."

"The legs were tired, but I think it was a hard season from Strade Bianche to the Tour de France," he concludes. “It was all the way full gas and I was in super good shape and after the Tour when I switched off, my body went kind of into shutdown mode and I was feeling quite bad the first two weeks."