“Pogačar isn’t a gamble, he’s a sure-fire value. He’s a champion.” That quote from Joxean Fernández Matxin came back in 2019, long before Tadej Pogačar had three Tour de France titles, a rainbow jersey, or victories in every Monument bar Sanremo.
Six years on, it’s no longer a bold prediction, it’s fact. And yet as Pogačar heads to Lille to begin his fifth Tour on 5th July, Matxin and UAE Team Emirates-XRG remain far from complacent. “It’s not a question of being cautious, it’s a question of realism,” Matxin tells Cyclingnews. “Everything you’ve done up to now is good for measuring your strength, but the Tour is the Tour. The race starts on July 5, and it’s only won on July 27.”
Even Jonas Vingegaard, his main rival since 2021, has tipped Pogačar to win again. But Matxin insists the Tour is never that simple. “There are a lot of parameters that you try to control, but never master 100%,” he says. “Wind, the peloton, the time trials, tricky stages… it all adds up.”
Matxin points to the 1996 example of Miguel Indurain, who won five Tours in a row and triumphed at the Dauphiné that June, only to finish 11th in the Tour three weeks later. “When you get ahead like Tadej, you try to stay ahead. But the hardest thing is staying up there.”
That consistency is what UAE values most – Pogačar’s Tour record reads 1st, 1st, 2nd, 2nd, and he’s aiming to add a third yellow jersey in five years. But that doesn’t mean it’ll be a two-man race.
While the Vingegaard-Pogačar rivalry has defined the last four editions, Matxin is wary of reducing the 2025 Tour to a simple duel. “You can’t sleep on your laurels,” he warns, pointing to new threats like Isaac Del Toro, and more obvious ones like Remco Evenepoel and Primož Roglič. “Just like Tadej appeared suddenly in 2020, so can somebody else.”
That said, the defining storyline of the Tour remains the showdown between the reigning champion and the double winner from 2022 and 2023. “The last two Tours were impacted by crashes,” Matxin says, referring to Pogačar’s broken wrist in Liège 2023 and Vingegaard’s serious injuries at the 2024 Itzulia. “This time they face each other again without setbacks. It’s a straight duel.”
And it might begin right away. “Stage 2 to Boulogne – nervous. Dunkerque – I don’t even want to think about. Rouen, Normandy, Mur-de-Bretagne – all nervous,” says Matxin. “Take away the first time trial, and there are nine stages with tension at boiling point.”
That tension was already visible at the Dauphiné, where domestiques from UAE and Visma were jostling for control on flat run-ins. The message: the stakes are too high to give even a metre for free.
The Dauphiné also revealed a slight crack in Pogačar’s armour – his time trial. He conceded nearly 30 seconds to Vingegaard over 17.4km, prompting him to quietly inspect the Dane’s bike after the finish, declining to speak to the press.
Extrapolate that to stage 5’s 33km Tour time trial and it could force Pogačar to go on the offensive in the mountains. “It was a day where he didn’t gauge his efforts well, and he wasn’t feeling superlative,” says Matxin. “But when Tadej doesn’t shine, people act like he had a bad day. You can’t underestimate the others either – they raced very well.”
And there’s more symbolism ahead. Stage 11 finishes on Hautacam, where Vingegaard dealt Pogačar a crushing blow in 2022. The Col de la Loze returns too, scene of the Slovenian’s ‘I’m gone’ radio call last year. The Ventoux is also back, where Vingegaard briefly dropped him in 2021.
Matxin isn’t concerned. “We can’t live off the past, neither for better nor worse. What matters is whether you’ve got the physical capacity to handle it now.”
But what sets Pogačar apart, his director insists, is what happens off the bike. “He’s not a champion, he’s a leader. A champion wins for himself, a leader wins with and for others,” he says. “When you’ve got riders like João Almeida, Tim Wellens, Pavel Sivakov and Jhonatan Narváez all burying themselves for him, it shows what he gives back.”
That unity – and the relentless winning – keeps morale high across the UAE camp. But Matxin is quick to remind that motivation also comes from knowing how quickly things can change. “When you’re defending a title, that gives you something extra. But you have to remember – you don’t always win.”
Pogačar will be hunted by the biggest names in the sport. Yet while the fight for yellow remains open, another race is quietly being run – one against history. With a fourth Tour win, Pogačar would equal Chris Froome and surpass LeMond, Bobet and Thys. At 26, he’s already won more than Indurain had at the same age.
Matxin and UAE may be preaching realism, but they’re managing a rider whose success already defies it.
