Everything glitters inside the hall of Vienna’s Hotel Sacher – chandeliers overhead, polished marble underfoot, and bouquets festooning every corner. Rooms here start at £550 a night. It is, by any measure, a grand setting – which makes it feel faintly absurd to be discussing the rough, muddy farm tracks of northern France. But that’s exactly what I’m doing, because opposite me is Tadej Pogačar, and I’m asking him about one of the few big races he is yet to win: Paris-Roubaix.
We have slipped into a quiet sideroom, off the main hall, and settled into armchairs. “The biggest point is,” says Pogačar, leaning forwards, “the faster you go on the cobbles, the easier they are.” Moments earlier he was on stage announcing his new ambassadorship with crypto exchange KuCoin, but it’s clear he’s more comfortable talking about bike racing. Dressed in a white shirt and navy check jacket, his hair freshly clipped into a neat short-back-and-sides, he looks disarmingly young, almost like a school-leaver eager to make a good impression at his first job interview. Yet, at 27, there is only one position he is still seeking: that of the greatest cyclist of all time.
