Last year was an exploratory year. Pogačar came within a botched corner of winning. So what does a second crack look like?
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There are a few realities Tadej Pogačar must still grapple with as he heads to Paris-Roubaix for the second time. He is too small, for one. He still can’t outsprint Mathieu van der Poel or Wout van Aert in a velodrome under normal circumstances. And for all his dominance across the rest of the calendar, Paris-Roubaix has a specific physical demand that works against him: raw power, not watts per kilogram.
Since World War II, winners of this race have averaged significantly greater height and weight than winners of any other major race on the calendar. The cobbles don’t care about Alpe d’Huez time. They reward the rider who can produce 500 watts for consecutive minutes across sector after sector, and riders like Van der Poel, Van Aert, and Filippo Ganna can do that.
And yet. He has now done this race once. He came arguably within a corner of winning it. And he arrives in 2026 having already won Strade Bianche, Milan-San Remo, and the Tour of Flanders – a perfect hit rate, as those are the only races he’s entered so far this season. The man who was supposed to be unsuited to Roubaix is becoming harder to write off with each passing week. If he wins it, he’s on track to win all five Monuments in a single year. Uniting the belts as nobody has done before.
Last year, we took a close look at how he could win it. The underlying theory was that he’d need to take heed of one previous edition in particular: 2019.
That race was won by Philippe Gilbert, the closest to Pogačar in terms of body type of any Roubaix winner since the turn of the century. But there were more similarities than just size; Gilbert’s Quick-Step team in 2019 was dominant in the way UAE Team Emirates-XRG is today, and second place on the day was Pogačar’s now-teammate, Nils Politt. There’s much to be learned from 2019. There’s even more to be learned from 2025.
What we learned in 2025
Last year’s debut told us two things about Pogačar at Roubaix. The first is that he is good enough to be in the front group through the crucial Arenberg sector and beyond, not that we ever really doubted that. Pogačar hovered in the top five positions for most of the stretch between 200 km and 100 km to go and helped whittle the race down to a select handful by the time the forest spat them out the other side. His positioning was excellent and he’s strong enough to make up for any mid-sector errors on the pavement in between sectors, at least to a point.
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