Tadej Pogacar has decided against racing in next month's Vuelta a Espana saying that his body is telling him to take a rest after the exertions of winning a fourth Tour de France title.
The UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider sealed his latest Tour crown in Paris on Sunday after producing a dominant performance over three draining weeks on what was one of the toughest courses in recent memory.
Pogacar had suggested he might take part in La Vuelta, that starts in the Italian city of Turin on August 23, for only the second time in his career.
But after Sunday's 21st and final Tour stage on Sunday, the 26-year-old made a point of talking about the threat of burnout due to the relentless nature of cycling's calendar and obsession with training.
So it was not a huge surprise that when UAE Team Emirates announced their eight-man squad for La Vuelta on Tuesday, Pogacar was missing from the line-up.
The 26-year-old will instead be back in the saddle at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Quebec and Grand Prix Cycliste de Montreal in September, with one eye also on the World Championships that are being held in Rwanda later that month.
Pogacar's victory in the men’s elite road race at the 2024 World Championships in Zurich saw him become the first male rider since Irishman Stephen Roche in 1987 to win cycling's unofficial triple crown.
“After such a demanding Tour, we decided it was best to take a break. The Vuelta is of course a race I would dearly love to return to. I have fantastic memories there from 2019, but now the body is telling me to rest,” said Pogacar in a statement announcing the UAE Team Emirates Vuelta squad.
“I’m excited to go back to Canada; the races are tough but beautiful, and they fit my style well. I’ll be aiming to be back racing well again for that part of the season and for the World Championships especially.”
UAE Team Emirates sports manager Matxin Fernandez added: “The idea this year was for Tadej to return to the Vuelta, but the season has been a long one for him. We spoke and agreed that the best thing for him now is to take a good rest and build up to his final season goals.”
Instead, Portuguese rider Joao Almeida will lead the team’s general classification ambitions for the season's final Grand Tour event won last year by Pogacar's countryman Primoz Roglic.
Almeida's tour was ended abruptly after a 12-rider downhill pile-up on Stage 7 that left him with a fractured rib as well as various cuts and scrapes.
Despite managing it through the following day's action, Almeida had to call it quits during Stage 9 as Pogacar lost the services of a key teammate ahead of the mountainous second half of the Tour.
But Almeida, who already has nine victories to his name this season, has declared himself for La Vuelta and will be joined in a co-leadership role by Spain's Juan Ayuso. Mikkel Bjerg, Felix Grossschartner, Domen Novak, Ivo Oliveira, Marc Soler, and Jay Vine complete the UAE Team squad.
“It’s a special feeling to start the Vuelta as team leader, especially with the form I’ve shown this season,” said Almeida, 26, ahead of the three week race.
“The recovery from the Tour crash has been smooth and my sensations in training have been good. We have a strong group around us, and I believe we can fight for something big.”
Ayuso returns to his home tour for a third time having finished third and fourth, respectively in 2022 and 2023. The 22-year-old will be hoping for better luck than in this year's Giro d'Italia when he was forced to drop out after being stung in the eye by a bee.
“The Vuelta is a very special race for me, my home race,” he said. “I’ve been training well, I’m feeling good, and I’m focused 100 per cent on doing a good race for the team.
“It’s always an honour to race on home roads, and I’ll give everything to make it count – whether it’s helping the team or going for a result myself. Spain always brings out something extra in me.”
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Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
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Tamkeen's offering
- Option 1: 70% in year 1, 50% in year 2, 30% in year 3
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The specs
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MOUNTAINHEAD REVIEW
Starring: Ramy Youssef, Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman
Director: Jesse Armstrong
Rating: 3.5/5
Ziina users can donate to relief efforts in Beirut
Ziina users will be able to use the app to help relief efforts in Beirut, which has been left reeling after an August blast caused an estimated $15 billion in damage and left thousands homeless. Ziina has partnered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to raise money for the Lebanese capital, co-founder Faisal Toukan says. “As of October 1, the UNHCR has the first certified badge on Ziina and is automatically part of user's top friends' list during this campaign. Users can now donate any amount to the Beirut relief with two clicks. The money raised will go towards rebuilding houses for the families that were impacted by the explosion.”
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GAC GS8 Specs
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Starring: Ahmed El Sakka, Amir Karara, Ghada Adel and Moustafa Mohammed
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Fuel economy, combined: 5.9L / 100km
Fireball
Moscow claimed it hit the largest military fuel storage facility in Ukraine, triggering a huge fireball at the site.
A plume of black smoke rose from a fuel storage facility in the village of Kalynivka outside Kyiv on Friday after Russia said it had destroyed the military site with Kalibr cruise missiles.
"On the evening of March 24, Kalibr high-precision sea-based cruise missiles attacked a fuel base in the village of Kalynivka near Kyiv," the Russian defence ministry said in a statement.
Ukraine confirmed the strike, saying the village some 40 kilometres south-west of Kyiv was targeted.
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WORLD CUP FINAL
England v South Africa
Yokohama International Stadium, Tokyo
Saturday, kick-off 1pm (UAE)
How green is the expo nursery?
Some 400,000 shrubs and 13,000 trees in the on-site nursery
An additional 450,000 shrubs and 4,000 trees to be delivered in the months leading up to the expo
Ghaf, date palm, acacia arabica, acacia tortilis, vitex or sage, techoma and the salvadora are just some heat tolerant native plants in the nursery
Approximately 340 species of shrubs and trees selected for diverse landscape
The nursery team works exclusively with organic fertilisers and pesticides
All shrubs and trees supplied by Dubai Municipality
Most sourced from farms, nurseries across the country
Plants and trees are re-potted when they arrive at nursery to give them room to grow
Some mature trees are in open areas or planted within the expo site
Green waste is recycled as compost
Treated sewage effluent supplied by Dubai Municipality is used to meet the majority of the nursery’s irrigation needs
Construction workforce peaked at 40,000 workers
About 65,000 people have signed up to volunteer
Main themes of expo is ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future’ and three subthemes of opportunity, mobility and sustainability.
Expo 2020 Dubai to open in October 2020 and run for six months
Uefa Nations League: How it works
The Uefa Nations League, introduced last year, has reached its final stage, to be played over five days in northern Portugal. The format of its closing tournament is compact, spread over two semi-finals, with the first, Portugal versus Switzerland in Porto on Wednesday evening, and the second, England against the Netherlands, in Guimaraes, on Thursday.
The winners of each semi will then meet at Porto’s Dragao stadium on Sunday, with the losing semi-finalists contesting a third-place play-off in Guimaraes earlier that day.
Qualifying for the final stage was via League A of the inaugural Nations League, in which the top 12 European countries according to Uefa's co-efficient seeding system were divided into four groups, the teams playing each other twice between September and November. Portugal, who finished above Italy and Poland, successfully bid to host the finals.
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