Tadej Pogacar will be at the Paris-Roubaix

Yesterday afternoon the news broke that Tadej Pogacar was no longer on the list of entries for the E3 Saxo Classic which will take place next Friday. Now, UAE Team Emirates has just announced the final line-ups for this race and the Slovenian will also not be in Gent-Wevelgem on Sunday, which can only mean one thing: he will be in Paris-Roubaix.

The double Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix becomes Tadej Pogacar's number one goal

After the rumors that have been circulating about the hypothetical participation of Tadej Pogacar in Paris-Roubaix since he was seen reconnoitering the cobblestone sectors of the Hell of the North, the opinions of his coaches that he should not participate in it due to the risk involved, and all the tremendous hype that has been building up, especially after conceding to Mathieu van der Poel in Milan-San Remo, something that the team has just officially confirmed with a brief paragraph indicating that Tadej Pogacar will compete in the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.

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The reasons for the Slovenian's calendar change were already pointed out by the team several weeks ago when it was mentioned that, in case of doing Paris-Roubaix, the E3 Saxo Classic and Gent-Wevelgem would be removed from Tadej Pogacar's calendar in which he was initially going to take part as a prelude to the Tour of Flanders. Well, that situation has occurred after UAE Team Emirates-XRG announced the line-ups for both races in which Tadej Pogacar's name does not appear, and in a brief paragraph at the end of the statement it is indicated that his absence is motivated by wanting to focus on the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix as the most iconic races.

In any case, the decision to skip these two races seems quite risky as the Slovenian will not wear a race number again until next week when he competes in the Tour of Flanders, without any prior contact with the cobblestones.

This will lead to an intense week of pave that could go down in cycling history with Mathieu van der Poel seeking to improve on last year's fantastic spring with a new double in the cobblestone monuments to add to the Milan-San Remo he won a few days ago. Wout van Aert, who has sacrificed much of his cyclocross season and has trained diligently only to win in Flanders and Roubaix, his great cycling challenge, and Tadej Pogacar, who already knows what it's like to win in Oudenaarde and just by starting in Paris-Roubaix makes history as the first Tour winner to do so since Greg Lemon did it in 1991, well, actually Bradley Wiggins also participated in this race but at the end of his career. However, if we have to relate this race to a Tour de France winner, the last one to win in both scenarios was Bernard Hinault. Will Tadej Pogacar be able to emulate the Badger?