Top form on demand: Pogacar did - away from the crowds - "nothing special" for sought-after World Championship legs

Tadej Pogacar is the top favorite, and according to some cycling fans and analysts, the World Championship will even be a formality. "If Pogacar has the guts, he'll make it a one-man show in Zurich," Michel Wuyts wrote at HLN. Nice, but what exactly about his World Championship legs? Pogacar provided a small teaser in Canada but otherwise kept remarkably quiet. That's no different at UAE-Team Emirates.

How Pogacar won in the GP Montréal was impressive, as he has been on the attack playfully all year. Some saw a gap for the World Championship afterward ("His attack was not like the way he attacked in the Tour"), and others looked with open mouths at his "breathing rate" and "glycogen." For a World Championship, nothing goes unsaid, and they seem to get that at Camp Pogacar, too. No Strava files of workouts and hardly any spontaneous contributions on social media; he is on a mission.

Fortunately, on Friday, Geraint Thomas was training in the Alpes-Maritimes region of southern France. It's near Monaco, where Pogacar and Thomas live, and Michael Matthews, the Slovenian's great cycling friend. Thomas saw the pair riding past by chance. "I was on my way home when these two drove by me. I ended up spending another three hours on the bike," the Welshman laughingly wrote on his social channels. "They did pay lunch for me, fortunately."

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UAE Team Emirates claims Pogacar did "nothing special" after Tour

So he is still around, Tadej Pogacar. Aside from his appearance in Canada, we haven't seen him in a race since the Tour de France. Not surprising, after he had already won the Giro d'Italia before it. After the usual celebrations and a well-deserved vacation, he posted something on Instagram again four weeks ago. "Time to get back to work," a commercial post read. In the following weeks, we saw snippets of his World Championship preparations. He was cycling with Matthews and Tim Wellens behind the moped toward Canada and standing on the pedals around Monaco.

No altitude training toward the World Championship, no official training camp... At UAE-Team Emirates, they took it all lighthearted. Team manager Andrej Hauptman told IDLProCycling.com when asked about the Tour of Luxembourg. "Tadej is always motivated and looking forward to winning new races. He already has a good standard, although he didn't do anything special for that. He rode relaxed for a few weeks after the Tour without specific training. He is preparing more precisely and then gets up to speed quickly. Whether he can do more after Canada? That's never easy to predict. You depend on other teams ' strengths, even if you are in top form. We'll see."

Bram van der Ploeg (Twitter: @BvdPloegg | email: b.vanderploeg@indeleiderstrui.nl)