{"id":929623,"date":"2026-05-01T00:44:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T00:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/929623\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T00:44:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T00:44:19","slug":"tadej-pogacar-is-afraid-of-two-riders-vingegaard-and-van-aert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/929623\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cTadej Pogacar is afraid of two riders: Vingegaard and Van Aert\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nThat anti-Pogacar approach has not just been theoretical. Jonas Vingegaard<\/a> used Visma\u2019s controlled, selective and often stubbornly disciplined style to beat Pogacar at the Tour de France<\/a> in both 2022 and 2023. This spring, Wout van Aert<\/a> then gave Visma another major victory over Pogacar, beating him in a two-up sprint at Paris-Roubaix<\/a> after the Slovenian had already won Strade Bianche, Milano-Sanremo and the Tour of Flanders.<\/p>\n

For Zonneveld, that is part of a far deeper rivalry than most fans see. \u201cBut the war between Visma and UAE is enormous. That clashes on every front. We still don\u2019t realise how much is going on between those teams behind the scenes. For UAE, Visma are the only team they really hate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Visma\u2019s price for refusing to play Pogacar\u2019s game<\/p>\n

The irony, in Zonneveld\u2019s view, is that Vingegaard is often criticised for doing exactly what many say is needed against Pogacar. \u201cVingegaard is an example of that, because many cycling fans see him as boring. Or as someone who doesn\u2019t have the guts, because he doesn\u2019t follow moves. The reason he does that is because otherwise he gets dropped,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

That line matters because it cuts directly into the way Vingegaard is often judged against Pogacar. Pogacar has made 2026 his latest exhibition of range, power and aggression, winning across radically different terrain and coming within one sprint of adding Paris-Roubaix to his Monument collection. Vingegaard\u2019s season has been different, with overall victories at Paris-Nice and the Volta a Catalunya, plus two stage wins in each, reinforcing his own authority in week-long stage racing.<\/p>\n

Those are not identical routes to July, but they are both brutally effective. Pogacar has been proving he can win almost anywhere. Vingegaard has been proving, again, that he remains built for general classification control. \u201cWe want everyone to play that tactical game, and he is actually the person who plays the game we want to see,\u201d Zonneveld said of Vingegaard. \u201cHe gets under Pogacar\u2019s skin. I think Pogacar is afraid of two riders: Vingegaard and Van Aert.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others may help Pogacar, but Visma do not<\/p>\n

That is where Zonneveld draws the sharpest contrast with the rest of the peloton. His criticism is not simply that Pogacar is better than everyone else, but that too many rivals end up racing in ways that suit him.<\/p>\n

In that context, he argued that riders including Remco Evenepoel, Mathieu van der Poel and Paul Seixas can all be pulled into helping Pogacar\u2019s race rather than breaking it apart. \u201cEvenepoel in particular has the personality for it,\u201d said Zonneveld.<\/p>\n

That does not make Visma unbeatable, and Pogacar\u2019s 2026 form hardly suggests vulnerability. But it does make their rivalry different. While others are often drawn into Pogacar\u2019s rhythm, Visma have spent years trying to deny him that rhythm altogether.<\/p>\n

With Vingegaard now targeting the Giro d\u2019Italia<\/a> before another Tour de France clash, and Pogacar looking stronger than ever after his spring campaign, the next chapter of the rivalry is not just about which rider has the better legs. It is about whether Visma\u2019s anti-Pogacar blueprint can still disrupt the most dominant rider in the sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" That anti-Pogacar approach has not just been theoretical. Jonas Vingegaard used Visma\u2019s controlled, selective and often stubbornly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":929624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,31323,79,16152,180916,188712,20680,181698,16,15,34351],"class_list":{"0":"post-929623","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-jonas-vingegaard","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tadej-pogacar","12":"tag-team-visma-lease-a-bike","13":"tag-thijs-zonneveld","14":"tag-tour-de-france","15":"tag-uae-team-emirates-xrg","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-wout-van-aert"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116496555475210009","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=929623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/929624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}