Former team director remembers first time Pogacar talked about Roubaix, but warns him about Tour of Flanders scenario

For weeks, the talk of town has centered around Tadej Pogacar’s participation in Paris-Roubaix. The Slovenian rider from UAE Team Emirates–XRG announced in late March that he would make his debut in the iconic French race, with the reigning world champion setting his sights on an eighth Monument win. But according to his former team director, Pogacar had already been thinking about riding Paris-Roubaix years ago, he tells IDLProCycling.com.

“It was the first year he was going to ride the Tour of Flanders,” Aart Vierhouten recalls. That would have been in 2022, the year Vierhouten was in charge of tires and wheels at UAE Team Emirates and therefore also supervised Pogacar. “We did a lot of recons and testing over the cobbles. And right after the Tour of Flanders, we went straight to the route of the Tour de France, which that year included cobbled stages in northern France.”

Vierhouten remembers that they scouted every cobbled sector that was later included in that year’s Tour route. “We left with big smiles after a full week of cobbles. That’s when Tadej said, ‘One day I want to ride through that Forest of Arenberg,’” his former team director says with a laugh.

Text continues below.

Tadej Pogacar explored the cobblestones of Paris-Roubaix with teammate Tim Wellens in March. 

Tour wins and world title are "the trade-off" for his Roubaix entry, says Vierhouten

Did Pogacar have Paris-Roubaix in mind immediately after those Tour de France recon rides? Not quite, according to Aart Vierhouten. But still: “That idea definitely crosses his mind. He’s too much of a cycling lover not to want it. And when you see him on the cobbles, you can tell it comes naturally to him.”

In the cobbled stage of the 2022 Tour de France, Pogacar finished seventh after launching an attack on the cobbles in the final, managing to stay ahead of the peloton, which included his main rival and eventual yellow jersey winner, Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma). “At that point, you had a potential Tour winner, now a three-time Tour winner, who dreams of riding Paris-Roubaix. Should you keep postponing that for the next few years?” Vierhouten wonders aloud.

“I believe you should never limit a rider’s desire to take on a specific race,” the 55-year-old Dutchman continues. “I think that’s kind of the trade-off for winning two grand tours and a world title, that he gets to say, ‘I don’t want to wait five more years to ride Roubaix, I want to do it now.’”

Text continues below.

Together with Jasper Stuyven (Trek-Segafredo, sixth), Pogacar attacked in the Tour de France stage on the cobblestones. 

Pogacar realized after Tour of Flanders: "I want to compete for the win here"

Still, it won’t be Pogacar’s first time lining up at Paris-Roubaix. In 2015 and 2016, at just sixteen and seventeen years old, he raced the junior editions of the French Monument, which was won by Bram Welten (2015) and Jarno Mobach (2016). “He already got a bit of a taste for riding on cobbles back then. But when he really came here for the Tour of Flanders, to fully experience the cobbles, that’s when he realized: I can handle this, and I want to compete here for the win.”

Even so, at the time it wasn’t yet realistic to send Pogacar, already a two-time Tour winner in 2022, to Roubaix. “When you finish second in the Tour, everything gets put on hold, and there’s just one big goal: winning the Tour. They weren’t able to do that for two years, and then in the third year they succeeded again. Life as a pro is already pretty restricted. So you need to stay mentally fresh too, because the demands on riders are so high. The freedom he’s getting now, they have to grant him that. I think the team has come to understand that.”

By now, everything has changed: Pogacar has added a third Tour de France victory to his palmarès and has also won the Monuments Il Lombardia and Liège–Bastogne–Liège multiple times. “I think the team has become a bit more relaxed now,” Vierhouten concludes, reflecting on his former employer.

Text continues below.

In Milan-Sanremo, Pogacar (third) and Van der Poel (winner) were already on the podium with each other once this year. 

Can Pogacar compete for the win right away? "You could say bodyweight is a problem..."

The big question remains: how will Pogacar, who typically thrives on elevation and climbing, perform on the cobbles of northern France? “He doesn’t have the body weight to win Roubaix, you’d say…” Vierhouten laughs at his own comment. “But we’ve seen plenty of unexpected things happen. In the Tour, he had 25 kilometers of cobbles and that went great. But 55 kilometers of cobbles in a 260-kilometer race is a different story. So I’m really curious. We’ll see how it all plays out.”

Vierhouten refers back to Pogacar’s first attempt at the Tour of Flanders. “That first time in Flanders didn’t go perfectly, simply because he underestimated things a bit.” Together with Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Pogacar ended up at the front, but was passed in the final sprint by Dylan van Baarle (INEOS Grenadiers) and Valentin Madouas (Groupama-FDJ).

“That was a disappointment,” Vierhouten recalls. “But it was also a trigger to come back and do better. (In 2023, Pogacar went on to win the Tour of Flanders solo, ed.) That’s very typical of Tadej though. Even the next day, when everyone was shattered after Flanders, he said: ‘Come on, let’s go scout that Tour stage.’ He was determined to get back on those cobbles. He kind of has a Dutch mentality. He liked asking me questions about equipment. He wanted to know everything.”

Text continues below.

In 2023, Tadej Pogacar won the Tour of Flanders ahead of Mathieu van der Poel and Mads Pedersen (right). 

A new chapter for Vierhouten: now team manager at Bahrain Victorious

That’s also why Aart Vierhouten feels right at home at Bahrain Victorious, where he’s been a sports director since this year. “With Slovenians, yes means yes and no means no. There’s no ‘maybe,’ and in top-level sport, you can’t do much with ‘maybe.’ That’s why I enjoy working with them.” The WorldTour team has a largely Slovenian support staff and even boasts Slovenian team leader Matej Mohoric.

In recent years, the team lacked sufficient focus on the classics, which is why Vierhouten—who previously worked with Vacansoleil-DCM, Team Qhubeka NextHash, UAE, and Q36.5—was brought in to take charge of their classics program. “The classics have always been my passion, and I’ve been able to further develop in that area in recent years. We do have a few guys like Mohoric and Fred Wright who are capable. But when you only have two riders, it’s not enough. Some teams tackle this period with 15 riders—we have nine, and seven need to race constantly. That doesn’t leave you with many options to rotate.”

And that brings the story full circle, back to Pogacar. Because while Bahrain Victorious has ambitions in the classics, they also aim to contend for podiums in Grand Tours—exactly what Pogacar is doing. In Paris-Roubaix, the rainbow jersey wearer will try to win his third Monument (Milan–San Remo is still missing from his palmarès).

Read also

Besides Kooij, 10 more riders are out of contract at Visma | Lease a Bike: "I don’t know if they have other options"

Van der Poel gets special equipment for Paris-Roubaix: "Equipped with features Mathieu requested directly"

Preview Paris-Roubaix 2025 | Van der Poel, Pogacar, van Aert, Pedersen, an exciting race and some rain?!

Subscribe to our Newsletter

Get every week the latest news about CYCLING in your inbox!

Subscribe