Just 27 days after securing a record-equalling fifth Tour de France title, Tadej Pogacar will be back in the saddle this weekend, looking to create yet more history, this time at the Vuelta a Espana.
The UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider was dominant throughout this year's Tour, winning five stages on the way to victory in Paris, maintaining the sparkling form he has shown all year.
Now Pogacar's focus shifts to one of the few titles the Slovenian superstar has yet to lift: La Vuelta. The race begins in his adopted home of Monaco with a 9km-long individual team-trial around the principality on Saturday.
If he stands on top of the podium in Granada – the first time La Vuelta has not ended in Madrid since 2021 – on September 13, having finished third in his only other attempt at the race seven years ago, Pogacar will have become only the ninth rider to win all three Grand Tours.
When he secured the Giro d'Italia-Tour de France double in 2024, there was a 34-day gap between the two races. If he wants another Grand Tour double this time round, Pogacar will have had a week less recovery time ahead of a 3,275km route that includes more than 58,000m of climbing across 21 stages.
UAE Team Emirates-XRG head of performance, Jeroen Swart, insists Pogacar’s race calendar was set up to allow him “the mental freshness to be able to do the Vuelta” if that was what was decided upon after the Tour.
“There's not a lot of time, so there's not a lot you can do; it's pretty straightforward,” Swart told Cycling News this week. “But we omitted the altitude training. It's a cognitive effort to be away and do that, and we're later in the year.
"When you talk about the transition from Giro to Tour, it's still early; there's more freshness. At this point in the season, you know you want him to be just recovering both mentally and physically. At a camp, there's that mental effort required as well.
“Tadej has already proven that he can do two Grand Tours, comfortably, in succession,” Swart added. “Then if we look at his form at the Tour de France and the margin he had on his competitors, so naturally, the level of competition at the Vuelta will be a little bit below that of the Tour de France.
“So I don't necessarily think there's anything that we're looking for in terms of any spectacular revelation or performance … it's more a matter of getting the job done.”
Pogacar's run in 2026 has been nothing short of sensational, winning six of the seven World Tour races he has lined up in – the Milano-Sanremo, Tour de Romandie, Strade Bianche, Tour of Flanders, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, and Tour de France – while also finishing an agonising second in April's Paris-Roubaix.
Lining up alongside Pogacar in Monaco will be last year’s La Vuelta runner-up Joao Almeida and Tour Down Under winner Jay Vine, as well as Pavel Sivakov, Pablo Torres, Kevin Vermaerke, Domen Novak and Ivo Oliveira.
“I’m excited to say I’m going back to La Vuelta,” Pogacar said ahead of Saturday's opening stage. “It was my first ever Grand Tour back in 2019 and an amazing experience. Spain is a country I love to visit and race in, and I think the time is right to go back.
“The motivation is high to finish off the year in a good way and the Vuelta will be a big target. The team is strong and we hope to do good things.”
Pogacar will not be going up against old rival Jonas Vingegaard, who became the eighth rider to complete the Grand Tour clean sweep after winning this year’s Giro.
Vingegaard would have been Spain, but but the Dane’s season was already over after he sustained a broken collarbone, crashingcrashing out of the Tour.
Four-time champion Primoz Roglic will be on the starting line despite being hit by a car during training less than a month ago.
The 36-year-old will be leading Red Bull-BORA-Hansgrohe's charge with teammate and Tour de France runner-up Remco Evenepoel absent. “I have a very good history with the Vuelta a Espana and I always enjoy racing there,” said Roglic.
“Winning it four times is already something I could never have imagined, so I don't want to put extra pressure on myself.
“We will take it day by day, do everything we can as a team and try to achieve the best possible outcome. I'm looking forward to it.”
