Tadej Pogačar heads into Liège-Bastogne-Liège as one of the few superstars to have survived the first months of the 2024 season without breaking something. In his pre-race press conference, Pogačar said he would miss having Remco Evenepoel - the winner of the last two editions of La Doyenne - on the start line.
"I was hoping from the start of the year that we would go head to head with Remco here in this race because he loves this race," Pogačar said. "I love it also, and it would [have been] interesting but cycling sucks sometimes."
Pogačar might have just been lucky to have escaped the mayhem that has put Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) out of the Giro d'Italia, and left his teammate Jonas Vingegaard and Soudal-QuickStep's Evenepoel nursing broken bones. He's had just nine days of racing as part of his pared-back season to be fresh for his attempt to win the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France.
Still, he's one of the major contenders for Liège-Bastogne-Liège with a commanding solo victory in Strade Bianche and a crushing performance to win the Volta a Catalunya. In the absence of Evenepoel, Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) has stepped up to try to add the oldest Monument to his palmares and is set to be his top rival along with Amstel Gold Race winner Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers).
Even with the quality of the start list, Pogačar would rather have all of his rivals on the line to battle against.
"When there is everybody from the top tier in cycling in the race and you manage to win, you feel more satisfied," he said.
The same goes for the Tour de France. Pogačar has been second to Vingegaard in the last two editions and even if the crash that left the Dane with broken bones and a punctured lung ups his odds for the Giro-Tour double, he hopes Vingegaard recovers in time.
"I always want to race against the best and Jonas is probably the best climber in the world and for the Tour, he's always the best, so I wish that he comes back on the same level as before and that we can have a good go again," he said before acknowledging that the timing of his crash makes a full recovery for the Tour tricky.
"I know from my experience that the body needs quite a long recovery even if your mind is ready to go on the bike. You want to push but the body needs to recover from anything broken or any damage to the body. So for sure, it affects the preparations and it affects the mental part as well.
"I hope everybody can recover as fast as possible and be on the altitude training camps as fast as possible to prepare for the Tour because I know how important is to have as much time as possible. I think there is still some time to the Tour but the clock is ticking."
At Liège-Bastogne-Liège last year, Pogačar went in as the hot favourite after winning the Tour of Flanders, La Flèche Wallonne and the Amstel Gold Race but crashed in the early part of the race and was out for weeks with a broken wrist.
"It was completely my fault - It was quite a chill moment of the race. I was focusing on saving as much energy as possible and I was looking at the back of my teammate, Vega [Vegard Stake Laengen] - he's pretty big - I can't see anything over him. So when Mikkel Honoré crashed I was not able to avoid it. So it was completely my fault," he said.
Van Aert's crash on a descent during Dwars door Vlaanderen and the mass crash that took down Vingegaard, Evenepoel and Primož Roglič at the Itzulia Basque Country he said were "two of the most horrible crashes ever".
"It was not nice to see these big, big crashes when people don't even move on the ground - they just lay down and just stay still - you hope that somebody can pick them up fast and help them," he said of watching the wrecks on television.
Riders have been critical of the decision to include the descent in Dwars door Vlaanderen or to not protect the corner where Vingegaard fell into a concrete culvert, but Pogačar put some of the blame on the peloton.
"Cycling is a very dangerous sport. I hope everybody knows that. We go faster and faster every year, we have faster equipment, we push the limits of our bodies, of the bikes ... we just go faster and faster in every downhill, every uphill, every flat section and then you add up tiredness of the bodies and normally there's going to be crashes," he said.
"I see a lot of a lot of riders blaming the organisers a lot of times but sometimes it's just purely the rider's fault because we just go too fast."
Pogačar knows a little something about speed, too, after attacking in Strade Bianche and soloing to victory after 82 kilometres on his own. Then Van der Poel won the Tour of Flanders with a 45km solo effort and Paris-Roubaix with a solo move 60 kilometres out.
He didn't think it was possible to do something similar in Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
"I think this race is not Roubaix, it is not Strade. Here, the hardest climbs are more in the final. So I think it's pretty hard to go early," he said.
The climbs will also make the race harder for Van der Poel to win, he added.
"This race is suitable more for climbers than the heavier riders like Mathieu... but he can do everything so I think it's gonna be quite an open race on Sunday - a lot of attacks from far and anything can happen. It's a very long race - one of the longest of the year - and a lot of metres of climbing.
"You need to have a good team to control but I think there are quite many contenders. Everybody that was racing Flèche and Amstel - the top 10 or 15 guys - have good legs and they can manage to climb well for these short climbs. So we need to be attentive in the final 100k."
After watching his rivals suffer in the freezing cold and wet of La Flèche Wallonne, Pogačar didn't regret his decision to skip the race to train in Spain where the weather was sunny and in the 20°C range.
The weather on Wednesday was so bad that Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek), who Pogačar said was his first bet to win Flèche, dropped out when he became hypothermic and was shivering uncontrollably. He and Flèche winner Stevie Williams (Israel-Premier Tech), he said already proved they're in good shape.
"We can expect the good race from them. For Mattias, if he's not too cold - I felt sorry for him on Wednesday. I think he will get dressed a bit more for Sunday, so we can expect him in the final," he joked.
Pogačar wasn't ruling out working for teammate Marc Hirschi, who was second in the Amstel Gold Race, much like Van der Poel did for teammate Jasper Philipsen in Milan-San Remo, a move he called 'cycling poetry'.
"The UAE Team gave me a lot in the last six years. It's good sometimes that you give something back - like Van der Poel did in Sanremo this was really almost a cycling poetry. Because he knew Philipson was there and he had the best sprint. So it was quite a good choice."
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