"There's nowhere you can find a weakness" - Sean Kelly on how frustrating it must be to race against Tadej Pogacar
Cycling
In the great career of Sean Kelly, the Irishman has never won the Tour of Flanders - the only race missing for him to have completed the cycling Grand Slam. Now he's watching with excitement the adventures of Slovenian Tadej Pogacar who may have even better chance of winning all five Monuments - that is if he can even compete at the Paris-Roubaix this Sunday.
"Back through the last 30 years, you can look back at the guys who were good three-week stage race riders, and with 95 or even 100% of them, there were always places where they were not maybe the best," Kelly writes in his column on Cyclingnews. Like in the times of Bernard Hinault, say, there were climbers that he couldn't match in the mountains."
"But with Pogacar, there's nowhere you can find a weakness - he can time trial against the best, he can ride well on the flat and in the wind, he can ride downhill, he can do every bloody thing. So where can you get an opportunity to put him in a bit of difficulty? The answer is - there isn't such a place," Kelly answers his own question.
If the Slovenian was dominant only in stage races, that would've been one thing... "Now when you come to the Classics, he's coming up against guys who are specialists in the cobbled races like Flanders and he's able to ride these guys off his wheel as well. It's just insane what he's able to do - he's a talent in a class of his own."
"To look at what he did in Flanders, what first impressed me, even before his final attack was the way he was putting in all those moves, putting everybody on the limit and never getting to the limit himself. He took so much time on the guys who were dangling out front, in a couple of hundred metres he could take back 15-20 seconds, just like that. He was controlling what was out in front and making life so difficult for the guys that were with him."
"But when you got into the real important points of the race, it was always going to be Pogacar against Mathieu van der Poel and like I said last week, Van der Poel was bound to be in difficulty to match him on the Oude Kwaremont. It comes at such a late point and it's so long, if you start to suffer a little bit, that's where Pog's going to kick you. And it just turned out like that."
Paris-Roubaix
This Sunday will bring the biggest challenge for Tadej Pogacar until now. While at Tour of Flanders the steep climbs help him against cobble specialists, the Paris-Roubaix is a basically flat race. Slipstream will be the Slovenian's arch-enemy.
"Paris-Roubaix is another race compared to Flanders, though, it's a very different one," he highlights. "I think it'll be harder for him to make a difference, too, because on the flat and the cobbles, you have a lot of guys like Van der Poel, and Wout van Aert who'll be able to hang on better to his wheel compared to a climb like the Kwaremont, where it was much more difficult."
"But with Pogacar I'm afraid to say too much because we could see him win next Sunday in Roubaix too."
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- i willfully CHOOSE to believe in your theory about greatness being sharpened and driven by greatness, because in my ideal world that’s how i’d wish it to be. in this case, with mathieu in particular, i think the presence of first wout then tadej absolutely drives and consumes him to some degree. he’s a guy who admittedly gets BORED. and when mathieu gets bored he just goes and does something else. he’s very clear about the fact there are a BUNCH of things he just doesn’t really care about, and i think anyone who follows him has a sense that MVDP is here for a GOOD TIME, not a LONG TIME. my hope is that tadej’s greatness will keep mathieu focused and hungry. very sadly, wout no longer fills that role. he may again and i hope he does, but their career trajectories are going in different directions and have been for a few years now. i will be extremely sad for the truly SPECTACULAR van aert if his line MSR win is the only monument trophy on his mantle. at very least i want ONE roubaix cobblestone sitting next to it. he deserves to tell the story when the grandkids ask “why is there a big rock sitting up there, papa?”OCexile14-04-2025
- Why? He is being too hard on himself. No sane person will blame him if he stopped there and then.
KerisVroom14-04-2025 - You can find a quick explantion by searching for "finish line camera howtown". The camera only captures the vertical line. The photo that we see is a composite of vertical lines.KerisVroom14-04-2025
- Let us not go off the deep end for a start it us not attempted murder. At most common assault. Country dependent. Yes horrible to see and ob not a real fan of the sport or just a VDP hater. This has been going on for years look at Froome in the TDF and other sports such as football. That is soccer to the North Americans. Let the police do there job and hope the offender gets what is coming to him or even her.paultryan200214-04-2025
- Sure but talk about predictable comments, do we really need those (although this time it was more rambling)? Don’t love the media running after him to hear about it each time though. Adrie isn’t even that well informed about his son’s work, can’t they go interview people who have more interesting comments to provide like maybe his mechanic or masseur or nutritionist or driver,oh yes, they’re probably bound by nda’s, which is why no-one tells Adrie anything of importance, didn’t even know his son was sick before Flanders so some of his comments there turned out pointless.Mistermaumau14-04-2025
- I think with Tadej it’s often a case of his mind’s will being stronger than his racing intelligence, he’s lucky to be strong enough to recover from potential mistakes so knows he never has to worry too much about going past his natural limit but under pressure he makes more misjudgment than the average elite pro. I think Mohorič knows that about him too and possibly saved him from himself.Mistermaumau14-04-2025
- Thanks, strange, I would have thought with digital resolution and light performance these days, you’d see crystal clear high res images like you may have seen if you saw the close up of WVA knee wounds pic taken in-race as he zoomed by. Do you by any chance know what’s special about photo finish tech that leads to this?Mistermaumau14-04-2025
- Not to forget how their star rider is willing to play domestique for sprint stages, a few ladies could learn a lot from this. I was thinking, if either of Tadej or MVDP didn’t exist, the other could have reached Merckx monument level but then again, would they have the same motivation? Is it a coincidence they both have so many already and that the only other two who had more also rode concurrently? The one guy who pays the price of it is WVA who may come away empty handed, the best rider to never win a monument is surely worth an article.Mistermaumau14-04-2025
- So good it never happened, this team with MVDP is one of the reasons cycling hasn’t gone to shyt too much yet, I respect Tadej but I don’t think he’s even given much thought to the who and why of financing in sport and how naïve athletes just get used as little pawns in a bigger game.Mistermaumau14-04-2025
- It was still an incredible debute and winning this race is very much possible for Pogi if gives it a few more years experience. I was wondering if he didn't get good intel from the car and seemed to be trying to attack round the corner or at least apply pressure which it was just not the right place. Maybe the bikes played a part in why he didn't realise himself but I do feel given his stature and being the first ever Paris Roubaix for Poggi, if he needed more support from those around him in knowing the corners that you simply can't take like normal. I remember a gravel lane I took too hard once and it was a gentle turn but if you try to take hard it will throw you. Seems it was pretty common knowledge now for the others in the event but I didn't know and it ended up bloody and bruised all because I wasn't aware of this corner where the normal rules don't apply. I'd suspect similar myself.HoopoeChai14-04-2025