It all started with an Instagram post.
In February, Tadej Pogačar broke the internet when he uploaded a 30-second clip of him gliding over the gap-toothed pavé of the Arenberg Forest.
From there, the main storyline of the 2025 Spring Classics was set.
The five-star Trouée d'Arenberg sector is the most notorious of Paris-Roubaix’s 30 sections of cobbles, and, following the surprise recce in February, the Slovenian teasingly fanned the flames of a potential debut, saying in interviews that he would appear in the race for the first time either this year or next.
After weeks of ‘will he, won’t he’?, on 26 March, UAE Team Emirates-XRG confirmed Pog’s first outing at the Hell of the North this Sunday (13 April).
It’s a Paris-Roubaix debut that has got everyone talking.
For the uninitiated, ‘professional cyclist confirms he will compete in a race’ might not sound like breaking news. But this isn’t supposed to happen – favourites for July's Tour de France don't jeopardise their chances in April with a Sunday in Hell.
Bernard Hinault was the last to do the Paris-Roubaix-Tour de France double, in 1981, and the greatest of all time – Eddy Merckx – only managed it once (1970), although the Belgian preceded all five of his Tour de France titles by riding Paris-Roubaix.
But these two cycling greats are the outliers. Of the 25 riders who have won the Tour de France since the end of Merckx’s reign in 1975, 14 didn’t complete a pedal stroke of the Queen of the Classics, while most of the other 11 took to the famed farm roads years before they were focusing their efforts on a tilt at Le Tour (Geraint Thomas, Stephen Roche).
Pogačar is, therefore, in a small minority and will make history as the first reigning Tour de France champion to take to Roubaix’s start line since Greg LeMond in 1991.
But his appearance hasn’t got everyone talking purely because it’s breaking a 34-year record; it’s a cycling phenom rewriting the rulebook about how things are done in the modern era.
Here are four key reasons why Tadej Pogačar’s Paris-Roubaix debut changes everything.
There’s a serious injury risk
Tour de France contenders tend to spend springtime wrapped up in cotton wool – isolated at an altitude training camp, not duking it out in the battlefields of northern Europe where one slip could spell the end of the season (or, in extreme cases, your career).
In this sense, Pogačar is already a unique specimen and has a history of throwing himself into the Spring Classics – often coming out on top, as his latest (and second) victory at the Tour of Flanders proves.
But Paris-Roubaix is a different beast. Simply finishing is a feat in itself, while the injury ante is upped tenfold, particularly if it’s a wet race. With rain forecast this Sunday, expect chaos if the weather Gods get angry.
While Pogačar is no cobbles novice – he raced the junior edition of Paris-Roubaix twice, appeared to master them on stage 5 of the 2022 Tour de France, and his three Strade Bianche wins show he’s handy on the rough stuff – he’s never tackled the full Paris-Roubaix course since turning pro, leaving an element of the unknown in a race where luck has a huge part to play.
The Slovenian has already shown this year that he’s not infallible – ending up in a ditch en route to winning his third Strade Bianche in March, in a heart-in-mouth moment for fans of the three-time Tour de France winner.
It’s not his favoured parcours
Pogačar has already shown he is a once-in-a-generation talent who can dominate one-day races just as convincingly as three-week Grand Tours, and his mind-boggling Monuments record – 17 entered, 8 won – speaks for itself.
But unlike his victories at the Tour of Flanders, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Il Lombardia, the flat parcours of Paris-Roubaix leave him with no climbs on which to grind his rouleur rivals down, before launching an audacious signature solo attack.
Even at Milan-San Remo, where Pogačar launched multiple attacks on the Cipressa and Poggio, he couldn’t defy physics and see off Mathieu van der Poel – who, as the back-to-back defending champion at Paris-Roubaix, has the cards stacked in his favour on the flat cobbles.
Can Pogačar really drop the other pre-race favourites in Van der Poel, Jasper Philipsen, Wout van Aert and Mads Pedersen? Enter the velodrome with any of these powerhouses for company and he’s the underdog in a sprint finish.
His team didn’t want him to race it
While it’s hard to argue with a Triple Crown winner’s wishes, from the outset, UAE Team Emirates-XRG didn’t want their prized asset to put the rest of his season at risk.
Sure, victory at Paris-Roubaix would undoubtedly add to Pogačar’s already legendary status – leaving him a Milan-San Remo success away from becoming only the fourth rider to win all five Monuments. However, his team and their sponsors will be banking (literally and figuratively) on him lining up at the Lille Grand Depart on 5 July.
Suffer an injury and a lengthy lay-off on Sunday and their back-up GC contenders are Adam Yates and João Almeida. While both can certainly go toe-to-toe with Jonas Vingegaard on their day, neither brings the same profile or star quality to proceedings as Pogačar, and Vingegaard’s path to his own third Tour de France title loses its main obstacle.
He simply doesn't need to do it
Three Tours de France, including 17 stage wins. The Triple Crown. Eight Monument victories and counting. At 26, Tadej Pogačar has already achieved legendary status and is talked of as eclipsing Eddy Merckx as the GOAT. Given his trajectory and dominance, he could even smash Mark Cavendish’s record of 35 Tour de France stage wins.
Pogačar has managed all of this without racing Paris-Roubaix, and few would have begrudged him if he never did. But Pogačar respects the history and romance of the sport, and has a penchant for panache. Racing Roubaix is the ultimate power play for a rider with an insatiable appetite for racing and winning.
Speaking about his decision, he said: “I just want to do whatever keeps me interested in cycling and not lose motivation or just give up because it becomes boring.
"I just want to get through all the experience and get the most out of the cycling so that when I retire, I will not have any regrets and can say that I did my best in every aspect of cycling – that's my goal."
In a world of marginal gains and expecting athletes to behave like robots, it’s refreshing to see that, despite his godlike abilities, there is a human with dreams and ambitions at the heart of Tadej Pogačar – and one who doesn’t play by the rulebook.
