Pogačar's Perfect Spring — Three Starts, Three Wins as Roubaix Comes Into View
Three races. Three wins. No second places. As Tadej Pogačar rolled onto the podium in Oudenaarde on Easter Sunday, draped in his rainbow jersey and clutching the Ronde van Vlaanderen trophy for a record-equalling third time, the numbers that flashed up on the television graphic told the story of the most dominant spring classics campaign any rider has ever assembled.
Strade Bianche. Milan-San Remo. Tour of Flanders. Three appearances at UAE Team Emirates-XRG's biggest one-day targets of the season. Three times he has crossed the line first. And with Paris-Roubaix now just seven days away, the question has shifted from whether Pogačar can beat the peloton on the cobbles, to whether the peloton can find a way to make him, for the first time this year, simply human.
The Flanders victory itself was clinical in a way only Pogačar now manages. On the final ascent of the Oude Kwaremont — the climb he has turned into his personal launchpad — he waited until the gradient stiffened above the TV pylons, shifted up two cogs, and simply rode away from Mathieu van der Poel, Remco Evenepoel and Wout van Aert. By the top of the Paterberg the gap was 20 seconds. At the finish, 34. The chase behind, for all of its star power, was sprinting for scraps.
"I did not come here for a fight. I came here to win," Pogačar said afterwards, with the straight-faced bluntness that has become one of his trademarks. "The team rode an incredible race. Juan Ayuso, João Almeida, everybody did a perfect job positioning me. When I attacked, I attacked because the legs were good. That was the whole plan."
The historical context is almost uncomfortable to read. Pogačar now holds three Flanders titles, joining the elite club that also includes Van der Poel, Tom Boonen, Johan Museeuw, Eric Leman, Fabian Cancellara and Achiel Buysse. At 27 years old, and with a rider of his class, that record is unlikely to stay equalled for long. He is also the first rider since Eddy Merckx to win Strade Bianche, Milan-San Remo and the Tour of Flanders in the same calendar year — and he has done it without finishing second at any of them.
And then there is Roubaix. After publicly choosing the Hell of the North over a fifth Tour de France as his headline target this year, Pogačar has spent the winter and early season openly retooling parts of his programme — extra reconnaissance rides on the key cobbled sectors, bike setup sessions with UAE's mechanics, and a noticeably more cautious approach to risk in the sprints. Everything he has done in 2026 has been building towards next Sunday.
"I am not thinking about records tonight," he said when pressed on Roubaix. "Tonight I am enjoying Flanders with the team. Tomorrow, Roubaix becomes the only race in my head. That is the one I want the most this year. Everybody knows."
The peloton knows. Van der Poel, now chasing a fourth consecutive Roubaix crown, will be motivated like never before. Mads Pedersen, Jasper Philipsen and Van Aert all arrive on the Roubaix startline with form and ambition. But if the first three races of Pogačar's spring tell us anything, it is that the Slovenian is not simply in another gear — he is on another calendar. A perfect spring is still one race away. And nobody in the peloton is betting against him finishing the job.