S14 Ep145: Ignition: How One Race Sparked World Domination

2019 Vuelta a España, Dani Arribas, Tadej Pogacar was 20 years old, how old were you?

In 2019 I was 25 years

old.

25 years old and already of course following professional cycling pretty assiduously.

Yeah, for sure, seriously, but from home, let's say, not in a professional way still, but almost getting to the start of everything for me.

Yeah, absolutely.

And Dani, well, we know that Tadej Pogacar had a fantastic debut season in the World Tour at UAE.

He'd already turned professional and there was a...

There was some expectation.

We knew, I think those of us who followed the sport closely knew about his performances in the Tour of Slovenia.

We knew he'd won the Tour de l'Avenir.

So he was one of many promising riders in the pro peloton.

It's the same every year.

We get four or five names of guys who won Avenir, Val d'Aosta or under 23 Giro.

But maybe we already knew that something was different about this guy when he won a stage in Algarve.

And then he carried on winning, well, he carried on performing well in races like Tour of the Basque Country, did even, was pretty good at Liege-Bastogne-Liege that season.

And then he went to the Tour of California and he won the Tour of California.

Now, Danny, you found out earlier today, you unearthed something, a gem in a dark corner of the internet, which reminded me of something I'd forgotten or wasn't aware of, that that was the big objective of his first season.

And how do we know this?

Well, we know this because Daniel, may our listeners don't remember, as we actually didn't remember, but Tadej Pogacar actually had this blog on his own official website, tadejpogacar.com, which has not longer existed as it existed.

But digging up in the internet, in these lost archives of the internet, you can find a blog post that I wrote right after finishing that Vuelta in which he says that the Tour de California was the main goal of the season for him.

But as the season, and this is a quote, as the season went on, winning the week-long race in California, which was, of course, my main goal of the year, got us thinking in the team quietly about scrapping the original plan and taking on a Grand Tour earlier than we thought.

After talking it over with the team, we decided I would start, help our team leader, Fabio Aru, and maybe, and this is what today Pogacar said, just maybe get a shot at a stage win from the breakaway.

our stage went from the breakaway we only got more than that so Dani he arrives at the Vuelta a España and in 2019 it starts on I think it's still the Costa Blanca Torre Vieja the team time trial on these sort of salt in these salt mines that's what I remember these brilliant white blinding white sort of salt castles where the team started from.

And it was a very unusual start to Vuelta a España, a very unusual place for any bike race to start.