Slovenia is now synonymous with Grand Tour champions within the WorldTour ranks. The small nation packs a punch as a world heavyweight in males’s street racing, bringing their tremendous duo Tadej Pogačar and Primož Roglič to the 2024 Highway World Championships in Zürich. Between the 2 riders, Slovenia have bragging rights to the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and the Vuelta a España in the identical calendar 12 months.
Nonetheless, neither Pogačar nor Roglič has a rainbow jersey. Whereas each are rivals on the street, each are achieved climbers and will make, or break, the Slovenian effort to seize the nation’s first gold.
Roglič was a favorite for a medal within the elite males’s time trial final Sunday, however completed a disappointing twelfth. He admitted after the ITT that he was “nonetheless a bit drained from the Vuelta”, having gained the Spanish three-week race for a record-tying fourth time.
Pogačar has had his sights on the climber’s course in Zürich for months. It was a 12 months in the past that he completed third on the Glasgow Worlds, and since has dominated stage races and one-day races at will, netting the Giro-Tour de France double victory. A world title would give him the Triple Crown.
There are 273.9km within the race to determine who has the most effective legs of the 2, however they are not the one two riders on Crew Slovenia. There are 5 different riders current in Zürich, although Continental-level Matic Žumer is now a part of the group to interchange WorldTour veteran and reigning gravel world champion Matej Mohorič, who was anticipated to be a key pacemaker for Pogačar within the last laps of the hilly Zurich circuit. He pulled out attributable to an harm to his hand suffered final week when pre-riding a gravel course at Sea Otter Europe Girona.
Whereas Slovenia has had at the very least one males’s skilled workforce for 74 years, it was not till 2014 that the nation fielded an expert workforce for girls. Two of the riders on this 12 months’s Worlds elite ladies’s squad, Spela Kern and Urška Pintar, have been amongst that ground-breaking roster.
Historical past
Till Pogačar completed third within the elite males’s street race in Glasgow final 12 months, just one different Slovenian man had ever stepped on the Worlds podium since 1927, Andrej Hauptman doing so in 2001. Hauptman is now a sports activities director at Pogačar’s WorldTour squad UAE Crew Emirates.
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No Slovenian girl has but reached the rostrum within the 66-year historical past of the elite ladies’s battle for rainbow stripes. Urška Žigart, a five-time nationwide champion who this 12 months gained each the street race and time trial occasions in a two-day span, has developed into Slovenia’s greatest feminine street bicycle owner. She was seventeenth on this 12 months’s time trial, marking her seventh journey to the Highway World Championships.
Lineups
Elite males: Tadej Pogačar, Primož Roglič, Jan Tratnik, Domen Novak, Luka Mezgec, Matevž Govekar and Matic Žumer
Elite ladies: Urška Žigart, Urška Pintar, Spela Kern, Eugenia Bujak
U23 males: Gal Glivar, Jaka Marolt, Anže Ravbar
Junior ladies: Zoja Ferlež, Sara Pestotnik, Dominika Štrukelj, Anet Trakonja, Eva Potočnik
Junior males: no riders
Key riders
Urška Žigart
The 27-year-old all-rounder is the one girl bicycle owner from Slovenia who has achieved high 10s in Ladies’s WorldTour stage races. In 2023 she completed seventh total at Tour de Suisse Ladies and adopted this 12 months with ninth on GC. She additionally added a high 12 on the weeklong Giro d’Italia ladies.
Žigart swept each street occasions at this 12 months’s nationals however was not named to the Olympic workforce. She’s motivated to carry out on the worldwide stage, particularly on a course suited to her climbing skills.
Tadej Pogačar
A celebrity on the age of 26, Pogačar has six victories at Monuments already, together with wins at Strade Bianche and Liège-Bastogne-Liège this spring. Then he gained Volta Catalunya with ease and doubled the variety of Grand Tour victories on his resume, now 4, going back-to-back with wins on the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France. Throughout these three stage races, he gained 16 phases.
After passing on a possibility to compete on the Olympic Video games, which gave the impression to be a mix of Tour fatigue and a defiant stance towards his federation for leaving his fiancee Žygart off the Paris-bound workforce, Pogačar truly misplaced a race at Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec. He rebounded two days later to seize the victory at Grand Prix bicycle owner Montréal.
And it has been frequent data because the starting of the season that Pogačar has had his sights on September’s street race at Worlds. After doubling up with extra Grand Tour {hardware} on the Giro and Tour this summer season, he can now full the ‘triple crown’ of biking with a street race world title. That might transfer him into one other stratosphere alongside solely two different riders, Eddy Merckx in 1974 and Stephen Roche in 1987.
Primož Roglič
Roglič comes off a fourth GC crown on the Vuelta a España so as to add to the Giro victory of final 12 months, which is one Grand Tour higher than Pogačar. He additionally has Monument wins to his identify and a gold medal within the time trial from the Tokyo Olympic Video games. However the rainbow jersey from the Worlds has eluded the 34-year-old.
His greatest end in a Worlds street race was sixth in 2020 and he final competed within the Worlds in 2021, going forty eighth. He is among the world’s greatest climbers, so the 273.9km route with a complete elevation acquire of 4,470 metres is a problem he relishes.
Roglič is out to show he’s resilient, not simply from twelfth place within the ITT a number of days in the past at Worlds, however from an total difficult 12 months. He was concerned within the now notorious mass-crash on stage 4 at Itzulia Basque Nation on stage 4, however resumed racing two months later and gained the general at Critérium du Dauphiné. Then he suffered a fracture to his decrease again on a crash on stage 12 of the Tour de France, when he was fourth on GC. Six weeks later he was again on the Vuelta and fought his was to a different victory there.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
With a pair of WorldTour powerhouses within the males’s race, Slovenia have the most effective odds to safe their first-ever gold medal. In reality, Pogačar and Roglič may pull off a pair of medals. Nationwide Coach Uroš Murn referred to as the state of affairs, “Within the period of recent sports activities, that is one thing unimaginable, what our riders are doing”.
Lots has to go proper for the second state of affairs to develop, however so long as all seven riders comply with by means of with a recreation plan, Slovenia could have a second consecutive 12 months with one medal to have fun, which they hope is gold.
Weaknesses
The opposite aspect of the coin in having a pair of WorldTour powerhouses is {that a} energy battle may develop and result in a scarcity of cohesion in an all-for-one united power. How will this play out towards robust groups from Belgium, Netherlands, Italy and France, but additionally with a attainable inside battle if each have nice legs? Large questions shall be answered on Sunday.
What seems to be the most important problem for Slovenia will not be who the federation despatched to the beginning record this 12 months, however the lack of future riders within the pipeline to take over for Roglič, and later Pogačar. The nation didn’t qualify any spots for junior males within the two disciplines, no spots for U23 males within the ITT and solely three U23 riders within the males’s street race.
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