Three Key Ingredients to Tadej’s Tour de France Recipe
WORDS BY ZACH NEHR
There are three things in life that you can always count on: death, taxes, and Tadej Pogačar lining up for the Tour de France in great shape. Nevermind the fact that Tadej is coming into the Tour with a completely different preparation than ever before. If there were any doubts about Tadej’s pre-Tour form, they were erased at the Tour de Suisse. But to fully understand Tadej’s new lead-up to the Tour de France, we need to go all the way back to Strade Bianche in March. It wasn’t unusual that this was the first race on Tadej’s schedule, nor was the fact that he won the race with a 79-kilometer solo. But when Tadej crashed in Milan-San Remo, it looked like his entire 2026 plan might have to be thrown out the window.
Bloodied and bruised, Tadej fought his way back to the front at Milan-San Remo and attacked only a few moments later on the Cipressa. His skinsuit may have been ripped wide open, but that didn’t stop Tadej from winning the sprint on the Via Roma to take his first MSR title.
If there was any down time between Tadej’s crash and the Ronde van Vlaanderen, you couldn’t tell based on the World Champion’s dominating performance. He won solo again, crushing a field of rivals that included many of the biggest names in cycling history.
A crushing defeat at Paris-Roubaix Hauts-de-France followed, but it was only two weeks until Tadej would line up for another Monument in Liège-Bastogne-Liège. He won his fourth LBL title before going on to dominate the Tour de Romandie just two days later. After a six-week break, Tadej returned to racing at the mountainous Tour de Suisse when he won three out of the five stages, the Overall Classification, and the Points Classification. This was a completely different schedule from what Tadej is used to, but it seemed like it was working.
Sometime between March and May, the transformation had begun: Tadej was a Classics rider in the spring and a Grand Tour rider by summer. Most professional cyclists don’t transform during the season, but that is just one of the things that makes Tadej so special. The four-time Tour Champ has dialed in his pre-Tour schedule in recent years, and this is how he does it.
These are the three keys to Tadej’s Tour de France preparation.
1. Changing Rider Types Mid-Season
Even for Tadej, arguably the greatest cyclist of all-time, the demands of professional cycling are extreme, specific, and detailed. Most races suit a particular rider type. The flat Classics are for 70-80kg trucks, while steep summit finishes are made for diminutive climbers. Grand Tours favor riders who are somewhere in between, typical 60-65kg all-rounders with a strong climbing ability as impressive as their flat time trial speed.
When Tadej first turned professional, he was more on the climber side of the spectrum. His biggest strength was in the mountains, demanding climbs that would reward the strongest rider in the race. But over the years, Tadej has expanded his race schedule to include more flat Classics and hilly Monuments. The transition from lightweight climber to punchy Classics rider isn’t too extreme. Instead of 30-minute climbs, a rider may start focusing on 5-10 minute climbs.
But that is a simpler equation to solve because climbs are all about power-to-weight ratio. The higher your watt-per-kilogram output, the faster you will go up a climb, especially a steep one. This is what Tadej already knew how to do, so going from winning the Tour de France to winning Liège-Bastogne-Liège wasn’t a ridiculous stretch of the imagination. But in 2025, Tadej made a big change.
When Tadej announced his participation in Paris-Roubaix, pundits were immediately skeptical. ‘No one can win Paris-Roubaix at 65 kilograms,’ they would say. Even for a rider as strong as Tadej, he lacked the raw power that it took to match 80kg rivals like Mathieu Van der Poel and Wout Van Aert. The problem was raw power, and the simple solution was to gain weight through muscle.
You can see it in photos from January, April, and July. Tadej has a different body type in winter, spring, and summer. In the winter, he is in the weight room, packing on muscle and gaining strength that will last throughout the season. He does core work and upper body exercises that help cushion the blows from cobblestones throughout the Classics season. His frame is strong and muscular, built for speed, endurance, and raw power output.
In the last few years, Tadej has become stronger and stronger on the flats. He is able to shed some weight before the Tour de France, but that extra kilogram or two is what helps him compete for the win in Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix. In the last month or two before the Tour, he turns himself back into a climber to maximize his power-to-weight ratio. At this year’s Tour de Suisse, he showed the world exactly where he’s at only a few weeks out from the Tour. On Stage 5 to Villars-sur-Ollon, Tadej went all-out on the final climb, setting a 24-minute benchmark that is among his best climbing performances ever.
There are many different ways to measure climbing performance, but here, we’ll use VAM to compare and contrast Tadej’s estimated efforts. VAM is an acronym for the Italian phrase ‘velocità ascensionale media’, but colloquially, it has been English-translated to ‘vertical ascent in meters.’ In other words, VAM is an estimate of the number of vertical meters you climb per hour.
You can think of VAM like speed, but vertically. Instead of traveling horizontally at 20 kph or mph, you are climbing at a VAM of 500 vertical meters per hour, for example. VAM is strongly influenced by the length and gradient of a given climb – it’s easier to produce a higher VAM on shorter and steeper climbs, for example.
An exceptional VAM is >1,500 Vm/h on any given climb, while most amateur riders will be around 300-600 Vm/h. World-class VAM is >1,800 Vm/h, especially on longer climbs, in the heat, and up to high altitudes.
Pogačar – Climb to Villars-sur-Ollon
Time: 24:22
VAM: 1,887 Vm/h
For comparison’s sake, check out Tadej’s climbing performance on Stage 13 of last year’s Tour de France. It was an uphill time trial on Peyragudes, a steep climb that favors lightweight riders with a high power-to-weight ratio. Both Peyragudes and the climb to Villars-sur-Ollon were around 20 minutes at an average gradient of 8.5%, and Tadej produced around 1,900 Vm/h in both efforts.
Pogačar – Peyragudes
Time: 17:19
VAM: 1,960 Vm/h
The key difference is that the Peyragudes was a fresh effort in a solo time trial, whereas the climb to Villars-sur-Ollon came at the end of a 150km road stage. Tadej attacked at the bottom, pushing far above his threshold before settling into an all-out effort. It was also a hot day at the Tour de Suisse with temperatures on the final climb reaching 30°C. Tadej is rumoured to have done heat training in previous years, turning what once was a weakness into what is now a clear strength.
2. Smaller Race Schedule
By the time he begins racing the Tour de France on July 4th, Tadej will have only done 16 race days in 2026. That is the least amount of race days he’s ever done before the Tour, including in 2023 when he broke his wrist at Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Why the smaller calendar?
One reason is to reduce the risk of crashing. It’s no secret that professional cyclists crash, even a rider as skilled and experienced as Tadej. Every time a rider lines up at a race, they are risking a crash or injury that could ruin the rest of their season. With the Tour de France as the #1 goal, reducing crash risk is a top priority for Tadej.
Another reason for the shorter race schedule is physical freshness. Racing is extremely demanding for professional cyclists, even if you are the one winning the race like Tadej. Races require travel, stress, preparation, the risk of illness, and time away from home. As someone who has been a professional cyclist for almost a decade, Tadej probably has a good idea about how much he prefers to race versus when he prefers to train at home. In 2026, the approach has been to spend more time at home than ever before.
Tadej had never raced the Tour de Romandie or Tour de Suisse before 2026, so why this year? It could be as simple as Tadej wanting to try something new. He has won most WorldTour stage races at this point in his career, but he had yet to go for Romandie and Suisse. This opened the door for his UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammates to go for the win at races like Tirreno-Adriatico, UAE Tour, Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, while Tadej could focus on a new challenge.
That brings us to one final reason that Tadej has changed his preparation for the Tour de France…
3. Peak Mental Freshness
Cycling is one of the toughest and most demanding sports in the world, not just physically but also mentally. Tadej himself has admitted to mental fatigue during the season, even before any signs of physical overtraining. He has raced hundreds of times throughout his career, and spent many seasons traveling around the world from January to October. That can take a toll on Tadej, and it’s a major reason why he might have changed his schedule before the Tour.
By skipping the Ardennes, Tadej was able to spend more weeks at home and at altitude camps with friends and family. This helps him stay mentally fresh throughout the year, not only for the Tour, but also for the rest of the season. If Tadej targets the UCI Road World Championships and Il Lombardia, he will be racing until October every single year.
When you see his endless list of palmarès, it’s easy to forget that Tadej is only 27 years old. Physically, he should be able to race at his peak for 5-10 more years, if not longer. When it comes to mental freshness, Tadej is not only thinking about this season, but also about the years of racing to come.
A happy bike rider is a fast bike rider, and that could not be more apparent in a rider like Tadej Pogačar.
As we watched the Tour de Suisse, we could tell that Tadej was having fun on the bike. He wasn’t sticking to a strict race plan—he was riding with panache, attacking when he wanted, and winning like he always does. There were days when he was attacking on the hills, pushing hard on the flats, and even contesting the bunch sprint. While everyone expected him to dominate the climbs, few predicted he would win the Stage 4 time trial.
If there were any other secrets to Tadej’s Tour de France preparation, one is his improvement on the time trial bike. Tadej has always been one of the strongest riders in the world, but few times has he won a flat race against the clock. At the Tour de Suisse, Tadej showed that he is in the form of his life. He even mentioned that he broke his all-time climbing record during a recent test effort in Sierra Nevada.
All signs are pointing towards another incredible performance from Tadej at the Tour de France. The preparations are dialed in, and Tadej is looking fresher than ever. The rider that won Milan-San Remo in March is now ready to attack in the mountains at the Tour de France.
