On the eve of the start of Tour of Italywhich will start on May 4th with the Venaria Reale – Turin stage, all cycling eyes are focused on Tadej Pogacar. The Slovenian champion is the big favorite for the final victory, a position so strong that many observers imagine a one-way race with a foregone conclusion. Among the many attentions, news and curiosities that revolve around Pogacar these days, an interview given by his manager has aroused some interest Alex Carera to the Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad.
Carera revealed that he had met the future number one of Cycling world championship in an Italian junior race, the Giro della Lunigiana, and that he was convinced of his talent after seeing him win riding a bicycle much heavier than those used by his opponents. “He used a nine and a half kilo bike and still won” said the manager.
Carera: ‘At the age of 18 he signed the contract with us’
This curious episode occurred at the 2016 Giro della Lunigiana. This race is one of the most important events of the cycling international for the junior category. In that edition the young Tadej won the Ortonovo stage and the final classification.
Carera noticed a detail that convinced him of the extraordinary talent of the Slovenian boy. “He won using a very heavy bike. We were staying in the same hotel as him that day and our suspicion was confirmed. He had won using a nine and a half kilo bike. Not long after we went to Komenda, Slovenia, to his house. It took him ten minutes to sign a contract with us when he was 18,” Carera recalled.
In short Tadej Pogacar he made the leap to a continental team, Rog Ljubljana, with which in 2018 he won the Tour de l’Avenir, the youth Tour de France. That victory allowed him to attract the attention of one of the top teams in the cycling world championship, the UAE, with which he entered the World Tour in 2019, immediately obtaining the podium at the Vuelta Espana.
Alex Carera said that the UAE Emirates environment is ideal for Pogacar, and that the project could continue well beyond the expiry of the current contract in 2027. “What matters to him are the people around him, he likes to have always the same mechanics, masseurs, sports directors. He has a very close bond with this team, he won his first Tour de France almost alone, but now he has a very strong group around him his career” commented Carera.
Pogacar and UAE Emirates
The partnership between Tadej Pogacar and UAE Emirates, which Carera sees continuing to the bitter end, has reached its sixth season.
The Slovenian champion arrived in the team at the beginning of 2019 as a young and promising talent, in a team whose leaders were Alexander Kristoff, Diego Ulissi, Rui Costa, Dan Martin and Fabio Aru, the big transfer coup of the previous season fresh from a unsuccessful 2018.
In that first season Pogacar immediately made it clear that he was a special rider, immediately starting to win in the Algarve and California and then confirming himself at the end of the season in the Vuelta Espana, when on his debut in a grand tour he won three stages and finished in third place in the standings general. In 2020 Pogacar exploded even more sensationally by winning the Tour de France in a dramatic finale at Planche des Belles Filles. In the following years he conquered yet another Tour and six monument classics. His contract with UAE Emirates expires in 2027, but seems destined to be extended further.
