I laid my take out on his program in my post extolling the value of his potential debut in the Giro d’Italia next season, but here I will explain my logic for each race decision. Once again, here is the schedule:
Strade Bianchi, Milano-Sanremo, Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, Ronde van Vlaanderen, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Giro d’Italia, Tour de France, Olympic Games Road Race, Grand Prix Cycliste de Quebec, Grand Prix Cycliste de Montreal, World Championship Road Race, Giro dell’Emilia Tre Valli Varesine, Il Lombardia
Strade Bianchi is on his program for the same reason it is on the rest of the Big Four’s. There is a gravel stage in the 2024 Tour de France. And the White Roads of Tuscany are good preparation. Also, Pogacar would start the highly prestigious race as a heavy favorite. He won in 2022, but it does not hurt to double up.
I like him trying MSR next year again too. He got fourth this season in a race that is so far from suiting him, it was one of his most impressive performances of the season in my view. But he simply cannot win the race if the tactics play out as normal. MVDP, Ganna, Wout, and Tarling? These guys are going to go faster up a 4 percent climb than the 66-kilogram Slovenian. UAE needs to employ a different strategy next year (hammering the Cipressa, the penultimate climb, 100 percent full gas and keeping the gas on in the valley before the Poggio) and they have the new rider to help do it: Nils Politt. Pogacar can win if everything breaks just right and perhaps MVDP shows up a little out of form. A victory in MSR is so out of the question for a GC contender in 2024 that I would characterize it as one of the most legendary rides in the 21st century. I am getting pretty excited about cycling’s first Monument of the season already, but I will save my in-depth analysis of the tactics, riders, and route for March.
Catalunya is a preparation race for the Giro, but a chance for him to add another big one-weeker to his palmares. He is a bit light in that department so far, especially compared to Roglic. He generally likes new challenges and races, so I do expect him to debut in this race next season.
Pogacar really ought to return to Belgium and defend De Ronde next year. He has been the strongest rider in the race two years in a row, and I rate his 2023 victory as his highest level of the entire season. For a two-time Tour de France champion to show up in the cold of April in Flanders and surgically destroy the hardiest of huge Cobbled Classics specialists at their own game was breathtaking. It was this race that converted me more than any other to a fanboy. It will be tricky to be on top form for this race again next year with the program I’ve laid out, but nobody is better at both peaking properly and holding form than Pogi.
He should then return to Liege-Bastogne-Liege. He did win the race in 2021, but he really ought to be three-time defending champion. Of course it is already under his belt, but it is still a Monument, and possibly the third-most prestigious one day race on the whole calendar. It also suits Pogi to a T. I like him skipping Fleche and Amstel (which he added last year) next year to save himself for Italy in May.
I already wrote about why he should make his debut in the Giro d’Italia next season. With the Classics season I have laid out, he should dip in form intentionally after Liege, come into the Giro a little undercooked and peak in the second and third weeks. This would help him in the run-in to the Tour de France as well. He can probably win the Giro without being at 100 percent, and that is the approach I would take if I were him and his coach.
The traditional approach to the Giro-Tour double is no racing in between. So there is no need for a Dauphine (as much as I want to see him win that race eventually) or a Tour de Suisse or his preferred preparation race, the Tour of Slovenia. Of course, in theory, the Giro and Tour combination is made even more difficult next season than normal due to the early start of the Tour because of the Olympics. But I actually think this will help Pogacar in the Tour. Rather than resting between Italy and France he can simply build off the Giro and come into the Tour absolutely flying at a level we have never seen from him. He just confirmed in a FloBikes interview that he is always seeing small gains in his numbers on the bike each year, and that, more than any comment issued by any cyclist this off-season, should strike terror into the heart of the entire professional peloton.
As much as cycling is about stories, dreams, triumphs, heartbreaks, and the full spectrum of human emotions, races come down to the simple brutality of the numbers: watts. Mr. Vingegaard has not taken down Pogacar in the last two Tours because he wants it more or has better teammates or strategy. He won because he pushes better watts per kilogram into the pedals, and the chasm between the two in that department is widening.
If Tadej Pogacar wants to win the Tour de France ever again, for as long as Jonas Vingegaard exists, he will have to improve his watts. And my approach would be to train harder than ever before, including using a likely victory in the Giro to prepare. What he has been doing has not worked; it has been over 800 days since Pogacar won the Tour, a race which he seemed destined to win 10 times in a row after defeating Roglic at the age of 21 and becoming the youngest Tour winner in over a century. It boils down to the definition of insanity, therefore, he needs to try something different. And if this does not work, and he is dead-set on the Tour again in 2025, he will have to just build his entire season around July and disregard almost every other race beforehand, like the infamous Lance used to do.
I have already made the argument that, should he lose again next year, Pogi should surrender to Jonas for a year in 2025 and just absolutely clean up on everything he has not yet won, a full cobbled season including Gent-Wevelgem, doubling and tripling (and maybe a record-tying fifth Lombardia) up on stuff, completing the Ardennes triple, perhaps take three or four Monuments in the season, become World Champion (if he doesn’t already have the title) destroy the Vuelta, etc. It would be sad to see Pogacar skip the Tour, but even Contador did that one year in his prime. And Pogacar is a lot more versatile than the Spaniard, who never won a single one-day race in his entire career, ever was.
Pogacar has commented that he is not likely to focus too heavily on the Paris Olympics next year, though he is expected to start the race. This is 100 percent the right call. You cannot invest a lot into a race you probably have less than 10 percent chance of winning, no matter how prestigious. It is a shame the 2020 Tokyo Road Race was in Asia; I am confident he would have taken the Gold Medal if the race had been in Europe (I think the time change had differing effects on the participants; there is no way Carapaz should be Olympic Champion on that parcours). And that is a gigantic palmares booster. Pogacar can try to hold form after the Tour and do his best in the Olympic Road Race. Perhaps he’ll start the time trial too, but he performs surprisingly poorly in one-day TT efforts. I do not see the point of him even doing the TT with the quality of the field he would be up against.
I like a return to the Canadian Classics too. Montreal suits him far more than Quebec, but he could win both. And of course, it does not hurt that I would be able to see the races in person.
The World Championship Road Race in Zurch suits Pogi and this is one of his best shots at rainbows. He has stated that this race is near the top of his wishlist for 2024. I think most of the cycling community believes it is inevitable that Pogacar will wear the rainbow jersey for at least one season in his career, and it would be quite a shame if he never pulled it off. So this should be an enormous focus for his late-season training program next year; far more than Lombardia.
After he wins the World Championship, he should do the Italian Autumn program he did last year, with the exception of two smaller races. He wants to add Giro dell’Emilia to his palmares and he can stack up his fourth Lombardia, putting him one away from Fausto Coppi’s insane tally of five.
The two chief takeaways from Pogacar’s 2024 program are that 1: He is a greedy young bastard and 2: It is a problem of abundance rather than scarcity. There are not many races he cannot win; the biggest of them is perhaps Paris-Roubaix, but I am 100 percent a believer than he can win that one too. He has a ridiculous peak level, is terrifyingly consistent, and bounces back (and improves!) from a hard program quicker than any other rider I am aware of.
So creating a schedule for him is not easy. It almost has to be a three-year thought process. Every race happens every year except for the Olympics (which he probably cannot win next year). But you cannot do every race every season. I am confident that his Giro debut next year is the correct decision because of the unique nature of the course, his skill-set, his mindset, and nature of his career being at a bit of a crossroads.
I am in complete awe of his demonstrations when he is on form and a passionate, yet tortured fanboy when he wobbles, sometimes catastrophically so. He is human, unlike Jonas Vingegaard.
The man is virtually invincible, except in France in July it seems. I think he needs to play to his strengths and keep racking up the score throughout the year. If it does not help his form in July, which I believe it mostly does anyways, then so be it. Jonas is a Vampire Cyborg who is going to be virtually unbeatable in France for the foreseeable future. The numbers do not lie; for example if Geraint Thomas was dominating the Tour de France for years on end (barely doing 5.5 watts per kilogram) and Pogacar had one bad day and lost his first Tour narrowly, then by all means, go after it again at the expense of other objectives. But that is not what is happening recently. Jonas is flying up mountains almost as fast as Marco Pantani could ever have, and peaking in July, while Pogacar is winning the Tour of Flanders over a flying van der Poel, who many thought was unbeatable in that race. It is not a fair match-up. As inhuman as Pogacar is, Jonas is just better at the moment. And with the Tour route suiting Jonas next year even more, Pogi needs to accept reality and ride the Classics and Giro. He can enter the Tour with his season already having been a success and swing for the fences with nothing to lose.
And that might just be the ticket to completing the double with the Classics in his pocket. Of course Brian Smith over on GCN Comms made the comment during the 2023 Classics season that Jumbo-Visma had “poked the bear” angering the best cyclist perhaps the world has ever seen by stealing the Tour de France crown from him, spurring him on to potentially one of the most legendary seasons in modern cycling history. It was not meant to be, of course Pogacar lost in France again. But 2024 could be a different story. I will root hard for him (at least in my mind; Roglic has a lot of my heart next Tour) to regain his rightful place as King of France.
The 2024 campaign of Tadej Pogacar certainly has all of the potential to be the best modern season we have ever seen.
I really hope all of these guys are healthy all season next year, it seems like a new (clean) Golden Age in the folklore of road bicycle racing.
Jamie
Puncheur 
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