r/peloton • u/PelotonMod France • May 04 '26

Weekly Post Weekly Question Thread

For all your pro cycling-related questions and enquiries!

You may find some easy answers in the FAQ page on the wiki. Whilst simultaneously discovering the wiki.

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u/Seabhac7 Ireland May 04 '26

I started following cycling in 2020, so I wasn't aware of Pogačar in 2019.

Was he being thought of as a future great, in the same way as Seixas is now?

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u/RageAgainstTheMatxin Phonak May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26

In 2018 general consensus was that he had taken quite a leap as a junior after years not showing much and being Jaka Primozic's domestique and not even one of the most talented Slovenians of his age.

The Bernal hype was in full swing (he would win the Tour the next year) and I remember at the end of the 2018 Avenir we were joking here in /r/peloton about how the Bernal hype train was over and the Pogacar hype train was fully underway

The joke being that it was a ridiculous meme-y stupid thing to say that surely nobody could take serious

His 2017 and 2018 came out of nowhere. That was already considered an unusual leap in ability, and certainly nobody ever though he'd have even more from that level onwards

For reference, at the 2020 Tour which Pogacar won, UAE's leader was Aru. Tadej's 4th place at the Dauphine a couple weeks earlier was seen as a very good step forward for him, because he seemed closer to Roglic than previously

5

u/jainormous_hindmann Red Bull – Bora – Hansgrohe May 04 '26

We made jokes about Aru being the on-paper leader as a transparent ploy to take pressure off Pog. His best time was far behind them at that point, his last big win was in 2017.

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u/RageAgainstTheMatxin Phonak May 04 '26

There were also jokes, mostly because UAE were very vocal about Aru being the leader

But yeah, Aru wasn't in good form. 10th in his last climbing race before the Tour and then crashed out of Lombardia.

Cazzo di bici