Pogacar to ride Vuelta a Espana for Grand Tour treble

Tadej Pogacar, the newly crowned five‑time Tour de France champion, will contest this month’s Vuelta a Espana in pursuit of cycling’s elusive Grand Tour treble. The Slovenian rider for UAE Team Emirates‑XRG is regarded as the runaway favourite to capture the three‑week Grand Tour after securing his fifth Tour de France title last month, a feat that places him alongside Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain as the sport’s most successful Tour winners. Pogacar claimed the 2024 Giro d’Italia by roughly ten minutes, positioning him to become only the ninth cyclist ever to win all three Grand Tours should he triumph in Spain. At age 27, he previously finished third at La Vuelta in 2019 as a newcomer to the race. "I'm excited to accidental I'm going backmost to La Vuelta," said Pogacar. "It was my archetypal ever Grand Tour backmost successful 2019 and an astonishing experience." "Spain is simply a state I emotion to sojourn and contention in, and I deliberation the clip is close to spell back." "The information is precocious to decorativeness disconnected the twelvemonth successful a bully mode and the Vuelta volition beryllium a large target. The squad is beardown and we anticipation to bash bully things." The 2025 Vuelta a Espana gets underway in Monaco on 22 August and concludes in Granada on 13 September, comprising 21 stages spread over three weeks that include time trials, sprints, rolling hills and high‑mountain sections. Beyond his five Tour victories, Pogacar’s palmaresults list features three Tour of Flanders wins, a Milan‑San Remo triumph, two Road World Championships crowns, five Il Lombardia successes, four Liege‑Bastogne‑Liege victories and the Giro d’Italia title. He is also expected to defend his Road World Championships rainbow jersey in Montreal, Canada, just a week after the Vuelta’s finale. Although La Vuelta ranks as a marquee event on the UCI World Tour calendar, the sport’s leading riders in the modern era frequently prioritize the Tour de France, often at the expense of the Giro and the Vuelta. Historically, Merckx, Anquetil and Hinault each captured La Vuelta during their careers—Hinault doing so twice. Following his Tour de France win, Pogacar outpaced Belgium’s Remco Evenepoel by more than six minutes, and analysts anticipate an even larger margin of victory in Spain. Renowned for his explosive sprint and metronomic pacing on stages, he presently displays no signs of fatigue or weakness. In the current season, Pogacar has prevailed in six of the seven World Tour races he has entered, finishing second at Paris‑Roubaix in April in a dramatic sprint finish alongside Belgium’s Wout van Aert.