Tadej Pogacar heads to Slovenia for final race before Tour de France

Tadej Pogačar has completed his Tour de France altitude training and is heading to the Slovenia for the National Championships, his first race action since crashing out of Liège-Bastogne-Liège and fracturing his scaphoid.

The UAE Team Emirates leader will be taking part in the time trial on Thursday and the road race on Sunday, both of which take place in northwest Slovenia near the Austrian border.

Pogačar has been training and carrying out final stage reconnaissance rides at altitude in Sestriere in the Italian Alps alongside Adam Yates, Rafal Majka, Marc Soler and Felix Grosschartner. All of them are expected to be part of the UAE Team Emirates Tour de France line-up that will help  Pogačar target overall victory.

Pogačar is no longer wearing a brace on the hand he fractured at Liège-Bastogne-Liège and appeared confident about his form during final recovery rides in the Italian Alps.

“He’s going well,” UAE Team Emirates sports manager, Joxean Fernández Matxin, told Italian website Bici.Pro. 

Matxin confirmed that Pogačar’s wrist injury was progressing well, and that the training camp in Italy was his last stop before returning to racing.

“His condition is improving,” Matxin added, “we did a training camp in Sierra Nevada in Spain, then we looked over the stages in the third week of the Tour, and now, so as not to go back to Sierra Nevada, we came here.”

“Now he’ll do the two National Championships races, and then it’s straight to the Tour de France.”

Thursday’s National Championships TT is a 15.7 km uphill time trial finishing in the town of Poklijuka.

Sunday's road race is over 156 kilometres on a lumpy course in the nearby location of Rodovljca, where the championships was also held in 2019. This year's 19.5 kilometre finishing circuit includes a 20% ramp close to the line, tackled multiple times.

Pogačar has taken the Slovenian TT title twice, in 2019 and 2020, and his best result in the road race was when he finished second in 2020 behind Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma).