Will he, won’t he? It’s been the question on the lips of just about everyone in cycling in the past few months. Answer: he will – Tadej Pogačar will make his debut in Paris-Roubaix this April, attempting to win his fourth different Monument. 

In early February, Pogačar and his UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammate Tim Wellens were spotted riding on the five-star cobbled sector of the Trouee d’Arenberg, a 2.3km stretch of pitfalls, mines, and traps. Convention has it that Tour de France winners, lightweights who zip up mountains, don’t risk injury on the brutal cobbles of northern France, where falling is part and parcel of the race. But Tadej Pogačar doesn’t follow tradition – he does things his way. 

The Slovenian has always insisted he will partake in the Hell of the North one day – in his pursuit of superseding Eddy Merckx as the GOAT, he knows he will have to win all five Monuments – but he had never set a timeline on his participation. That recon, therefore, sent the cycling world into a frenzy. “He did a recon of the Tour of Flanders and he and Tim Wellens decided to do a bit of Roubaix too,” the team’s manager Matxin Fernández told Rouleur, explaining how the decision “was really easy”. “Half joking but half not, he said he likes it, it’s good, and we said: perfect, we’ll sit down and talk at UAE.”

This article was published by Rouleur in March 2025. You can read the full article here.