So near but so far. The grimace and shake of his head as Tadej Pogačar crossed the finish line a scant ten metres behind Volta a Catalunya stage 1 winner Nick Schultz said it all about his frustration at a painfully close miss.
The UAE Team Emirates rider later said he had hesitated just a fraction too long when Schultz bolted out of the pack on the long, draggy rise to the finish at San Feliu de Guixols. The Slovenian closed down the gap to the bare minimum, but he ran out of road just as it seemed like he would catch his prey.
After a comprehensive warm-down at the team bus, as well as a long discussion with teammates Marc Soler, João Almeida and team management, Pogačar headed onto the bus for a welcome shower.
But while later admitting that he had “fucked up a little bit,” Pogačar also recognised that Schultz’s victory had been richly deserved. And, of course, Vallter 2000, the first of two Pyrenean summit finishes, is already looming large on the Slovenian’s horizon.
“It was a really nice day, I enjoyed it a lot on these roads, this weather, a good peloton and the team worked really hard, everyone did a super job and then I can say I fucked it up a little bit in the final,” Pogačar said afterwards.
“I should have closed Nick Schultz’s gap immediately not thinking someone else would close it. But unfortunately for me, I was thinking too long.”
Directeur sportif Joxean Fernandez Matxin was philosophical about Pogačar’s near miss.
“It’s the way the race turned out, and that’s it, he [Schultz] could get that gap and stay ahead” he told Cyclingnews. “Marc did a great job on the descent and João was up there as well. But a group of 10-12 riders got round them in the last part, and then Schultz got away.”
Although Pogačar and his teammates made a pronounced acceleration over the top of the Grau and then kept in front on the descent, Matxin explained that “it wasn’t so much an attack as to be in the right position and stay as safe as possible.”
Soler, who hails from Catalunya and Almeida, who finished second overall in the Volta in 2022, were the logical choices to do that.
As statements of intent and a show of strength, Matxin agreed, Pogacar’s late charge for the line boded more than well.
“It was a good finish for him, but when it’s a tough little 700 final metres, and even if you take control with two kilometres to go and there weren’t any attacks as such but 10 riders got a little bit ahead,” he said. “Then they started looking at each other, Schultz got the gap and it was tough to chase him down with so many corners. But at the end of the day, Schultz deserved to win. All credit to him.”
Pogačar, too, had words of praise for the day’s winner.
“Nick deserved this victory because how he went in the last kilometre was actually quite impressive, Israel did really great teamwork,” Pogačar said.
“I did a super good sprint, I felt super good, I wanted to win for the team in the final, but in the end I was just a little bit too short.”
Although Pogačar has snatched some useful time bonuses and the team will be well ahead in the convoy thanks to that second place, Matxin played down their importance in the long-term, pointing out that with two major Pyrenean stages and a summit finish on Saturday, the race was likely not going to be decided by seconds.
The first of those Pyrenean stages, too, is coming up very quickly, with Pogačar both feeling upbeat enough to joke about the coincidence in names between Tuesday’s summit finish at Vallter 2000 and a certain Hungarian National champion, and also warning that if he didn’t get first place on Monday in Catalunya, Tuesday could be a different story.
“I spoke to Attila Valter and he said tomorrow he’s going to win because it’s named after him, so I will stay on his wheel again, or maybe not – we’ll see,” Pogačar said.
“We can look forward to tomorrow’s stage,. We’ve got a good group here, we enjoyed today even though we didn’t win. But I will try tomorrow and over the next days, too.”
