"We Leave The Cobbles With Our Heads High" — Forty-Eight Hours After Losing Roubaix In A Velodrome Sprint, Pogačar Confirms His Full Three-Race Ardennes Block And Names Amstel Gold Race As "The Reset Button" For A Spring That Still Contains The Monument Grand Slam If He Can Make It
Forty-eight hours after Wout van Aert outsprinted him in the André-Pétrieux velodrome, Tadej Pogačar stood at a tabletop microphone in the UAE Team Emirates-XRG service course in Valkenburg and confirmed what the Ardennes peloton had spent the last two days hoping against — that the world champion would start all three of the Amstel Gold Race, La Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège on the compressed eight-day Ardennes calendar beginning on Sunday 19 April.
"We leave the cobbles with our heads high," Pogačar said, wearing the black UAE training kit rather than the rainbow jersey for the first time since the Saturday before Roubaix. "Four monuments out of five in a single spring is still the best spring any rider has produced in fifty years. We came one sprint short. The goal now is to win the next three and get as close to a perfect spring as any generation has ever got. Amstel Gold Race is the reset button. Sunday morning I go again." The Slovenian had arrived at the service course at 07:40 on Monday morning, ridden 90 minutes on the Keutenberg and the Cauberg in light rain, taken a two-hour flight back to Monaco on Tuesday afternoon and returned to Valkenburg on Thursday — a compressed transition that the UAE performance staff have privately described as "the most demanding Monument-to-Monument pivot of Tadej's career."
The Ardennes calendar presents Pogačar with a narrative arithmetic that would have been unimaginable for any rider of the last four decades. Win Amstel, Flèche and Liège in eight days, and the Slovenian ends the spring with seven wins from ten starts, four Monuments in a single calendar year, and a palmarès that holds all five Monuments for the first time in history. Lose any of the three, and the Monument grand slam bid is formally over for 2026 — Roubaix will come around again only in April 2027, by which point Pogačar will be 28 and the structural question of whether he should even be trying to win the cobbled Monument will have a different answer. "We are not going to talk about 2027 this week," UAE team principal Mauro Gianetti said. "This week is about Amstel."
The tactical picture in the Ardennes has shifted materially since the Flanders form-guide update two weeks ago. Remco Evenepoel, who skipped Paris-Roubaix to focus exclusively on the Ardennes, has spent the last ten days at altitude in Sierra Nevada and is widely regarded inside the peloton as having arrived at Amstel in the best shape of any rider in the field. Mattias Skjelmose, defending Amstel Gold Race champion and fresh from his two-year Lidl-Trek contract extension, is in career-best form. Tom Pidcock, whose knee-ligament status had been a question mark through February and March, has been cleared to ride and arrives as a credible podium threat. The Sunday startlist of the 2026 Amstel Gold Race is arguably the deepest the race has ever produced.
What is new in Pogačar's Ardennes plan is the admission — offered voluntarily on Monday — that the world champion is not going to approach the three races as a solo killer the way he has sometimes approached Flanders or Strade Bianche. "These races are too hard, the field is too strong, to think I can attack from 50 kilometres every time and win three in a row," he said. "We have talked inside the team about a different approach. More patient on Amstel. Saving for the last 5 kilometres on Flèche. Using the full squad all the way to the Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons on Liège. It is not the Pogačar the peloton is used to. But eight days in a row of hilly Monument-level racing requires a different rider." The comment — delivered calmly and without prompting — is the most significant tactical statement of the Slovenian's spring.
Supporting Pogačar across the three races will be what UAE have described as "the most selected Ardennes squad in the team's history." Juan Ayuso, the race leader of the recent Itzulia Basque Country, joins for Amstel and Flèche before pivoting to altitude ahead of the Giro. Marc Hirschi, himself a former Amstel Gold Race winner, anchors the final-kilometre leadout. Rafał Majka and Adam Yates provide the mid-race muscle. Most notably, Tim Wellens — the engine of Pogačar's Roubaix ride — will miss Amstel after a private family matter but return for Flèche and Liège. The leadership hierarchy inside the team remains unambiguous.
The psychological dimension of Pogačar's Ardennes pivot is harder to read than the physical one. Those close to the Slovenian have described his Monday mood as "calmer than expected" and "already focused on what comes next." What is not yet clear is how deeply the Roubaix defeat will sit beneath the surface across three races in eight days where Pogačar is the clear favourite to win every single one. "Tadej is the most resilient rider I have ever worked with," head coach Joxean Fernández de Matxin said on Monday. "He will be better on Sunday because of what happened yesterday. That has been true for every defeat he has ever taken. I see no reason it will not be true again this week."
Amstel Gold Race rolls out of Maastricht at 10:45 CET on Sunday 19 April over 257 kilometres and 35 climbs. The Cauberg comes three times. Pogačar starts the race wearing the rainbow jersey of the world road race champion. A week later in Liège, if things go the way UAE have planned them, he finishes his spring with four Monuments won in forty days and a public answer to the question every cycling fan has been asking since Strade Bianche in early March. "Am I still capable of winning everything?" Pogačar said on the way out of the service course on Monday afternoon, smiling for the first time. "We find out on Sunday."