Team UAE Emirates confirms Pogačar’s Giro plans
Many have been asking if the defending champion would be back in Italy in May
It seems everyone wants to know what the best rider in the world, Tadej Pogačar, has planned for 2025—whether that’s Paris-Roubaix, the Giro d’Italia, or the Vuelta a España.
In 2024, Pogačar won the Giro d’Italia in dominant fashion. He took six stage wins, the pink jersey, the KOM jersey, and finished fifth in the points competition. Dani Martínez (Red Bull – Bora Hansgrohe) also had a strong performance.
He followed that up at the Tour, where he beat his arch-rival Jonas Vingegaard of Jumbo-Visma by six minutes. Like at the Giro, Pogi took six stage wins.
Then he won the road worlds, achieving the Triple Crown by winning the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France, and the road worlds, becoming the first rider to do so since Stephen Roche in 1987. The only other male rider to have completed this feat is the legendary Eddy Merckx. Annemiek van Vleuten is the only female rider to have accomplished it. His road worlds win was the stuff of legends: 25 victories, including a Giro-Tour double, a world championship title, and wins in several one-day races. And some of those races he won in style—particularly his road worlds win, where he broke clear and bridged to the break with 100 km to go, ultimately soloing for the last 50 km.
UAE had some hilarious training motivation for Tadej Pogačar
That was his first attempt at the Giro, but many wondered if he’d be back for another shot at the pink jersey. The 2025 Giro d’Italia starts in Albania—but it sounds like Pogi will not be there. According to L’Équipe, former pro Mauro Gianetti, boss of Team UAE Emirates, confirmed: No Pogi d’Italia.
When asked if he would not be there, on Wednesday after Pogi won the third stage of the UAE Tour, Gianetti left no room for error: “Yes, for sure,” he said.
However, Pogačar may still do another Grand Tour after the short one in France:
“Now we’re going to plan everything to know if he’s going to line up for the Tour and the Vuelta or just the Tour. He could only do the Tour. Depending on the start of the season, we will decide in the next few weeks,” he added.
Questions still remain, however, about another race: the iconic Paris-Roubaix. After training on all the cobbled sectors of the “Hell of the North,” a reporter from Het Laatste Nieuws asked what he was doing riding the same cobbles that make up the route of the toughest one-day race in the world. They asked him: Is he planning to race the Hell of the North?
His answer: “No comment. I’m here for this race: let’s focus on the UAE Tour, not on Roubaix.”