Tadej Pogačar all set for Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Tour de Romandie

As he seeks to continue his fantastic season to date, Tadej Pogačar will lead UAE Team Emirates-XRG at both the upcoming Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Tour de Romandie.

It is a pair of challenges that the Slovenian is relishing.

Pogačar: “The Ardennes campaign has been pretty solid for the team so far and I hope we can build on that for Liège. The guys worked really well in the other races and Benoît is flying too at the moment, so I think we are in a good place as a team to take a big result.

“I’m also looking forward to Tour de Romandie. It’s a new race for me, a new challenge, and that’s exciting. It will be my first stage race of the year too, so it’s a nice addition to the calendar. I’ve heard it’s a beautiful region to ride a bike in.”

First up will be Liège-Bastogne-Liège on Sunday, where the world champion will look to take his fourth title in six years.

At the 2021 Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Pogačar triumphed to claim his very first Monument success. Some five years on, the Slovenian has since brought his Monument tally to 12 at the recent Ronde van Vlaanderen, moving him up to second in the all-time standings.

Should Pogačar defend his Liège-Bastogne-Liège title on Sunday afternoon, the UAE Team Emirates-XRG leader will move to joint-second in the list of all-time winners. Eddy Merckx ended his illustrious career with five wins at the race known as La Doyenne (‘The Old Lady’), whilst both Moreno Argentin and Alejandro Valverde count four wins to their names.

In his UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammates, and Sports Directors Andrej Hauptman and Marco Marzano, Pogačar can count on the best possible support in his pursuit of a title defence.

Joining Pogačar in the 112th running of Liège-Bastogne-Liège will be Benoît Cosnefroy, Rune Herregodts, Vegard Stake Laengen, Domen Novak, Pavel Sivakov and the Belgian national champion, Tim Wellens.

Wellens has recently made a strong comeback to racing after a fractured collarbone suffered at the beginning of the spring. Showing his legs at De Brabantse Pijl, Wellens has since raced both the Amstel Gold Race and La Flèche Wallonne, and will be keen to show the Belgian tricolore on the roads of the oldest Monument in cycling.

First raced in 1892, La Doyenne has long been a mainstay of the cycling calendar, and a playground for those at home on the tough climbs of the Ardennes.

One such rider is Cosnefroy of UAE Team Emirates-XRG, who heads into Liège-Bastogne-Liège fresh from his podium finishes at both De Brabantse Pijl and the Amstel Gold Race. The Frenchman was part of Pogačar’s winning contingent at the Tour of Flanders, and will surely prove a key lieutenant once more.

The likes of Cosnefroy, Sivakov and Novak should come into their own on the punishing parcours of Liège-Bastogne-Liège, with no less than 4,401m of climbing packed into the 259.3km-long route. Starting out in Liège, the only categorised climb on the route before the southernmost point of Bastogne is Côte de Saint-Roch.

Once the race hits Bastogne after 100km, the peloton will swing back north and begin its pilgramage to the post-industrial outskirts of Liège. The length of Liège-Bastogne-Liège is challenging alone, but throw in the series of climbs which litter the last 100km of racing, and it quickly becomes apparent why this race has remained of the utmost difficulty for more than a century.

Eight of the race’s 11 categorised climbs lay in the final 90km, including some of the most iconic climbs of the spring. The Côte de Wanne kicks off the lengthy finale, but the race soon hits the Côte de Stockeu, which was often used by Merckx to put his opponents under pressure year after year in his reign at the top.

From here to the finish, the riders will have to ascend the Côte de Haute-Levée, Col du Rosier (4.4km at 5.9%), Côte de Desnié, La Redoute (1.6km at 9.4%), and the Côte des Forges (1.3km at 7.8%), before the last categorised climb of the route.

La Redoute is where Pogačar has gone solo for UAE Team Emirates-XRG in his last two winning rides, but for the final bump in the road, one must look only to the Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons. Standing at 11% for 1.3km, this is the last climb of the day and tops out with 13.3km to ride to the finish.

A tricky plateau immediately follows the Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons, before a quick descent to the line in Liège.

Two days after Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Pogačar will head up UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s ambitions of defending its title at the Tour de Romandie. Won by João Almeida last season, the Swiss stage race has also seen Adam Yates triumph for the Emirati squad in the past.

As he was en route to taking the title in 2023, Yates and his then-teammate Juan Ayuso both claimed stage victories for UAE Team Emirates-XRG, with Brandon McNulty and Jay Vine following suit in the last two years. For Pogačar, the ambitions will be equally as high as he makes his Tour de Romandie debut.

Already a consistent winner across the cycling season, the Slovenian has taken victories at four of cycling’s ‘big seven’ week-long stage races. Outside of the Grand Tours, these races are widely considered to be the most prestigious for the stage racers of the peloton, and for Pogačar, only wins at Itzulia Basque Country, the Tour de Suisse and the Tour de Romandie remain.

Remarkably, no rider, not even Eddy Merckx, has ever won all seven of these stage races. As such, the Tour de Romandie would take a valuable place in the palmarès of the UAE Team Emirates-XRG leader.

In his pursuit of the crown, Pogačar can count on the support of teammates Felix Großschartner, Vegard Stake Laengen, Domen Novak, Ivo Oliveira, Pavel Sivakov and Kevin Vermaerke. From the team car, Sports Directors Tomas Gil and Fabrizio Guidi will direct proceedings, alongside their colleague and Swiss native, Simone Pedrazzini.

With a prologue and five road stages, the 79th edition of the Tour de Romandie will take the riders through the French-speaking region of Switzerland and include the usual plethora of climbs. The prologue itself, taking place on Tuesday, 28 April, will stretch for only 3.2km between Villaars and Glâne, before the tough racing truly gets underway on Wednesday.

Stage 1 of the 2026 Tour de Romandie presents an out-and-back route from Martigny, which winds around the Rhône River before hitting the first major climb of the race. The Ovronnaz ascent stands at 9.5% for 9km, with its summit laying just 33km from the finish line.

Despite the last 20km of the stage being completely flat, the difficulty of the climb will surely draw the general classification contenders into their first skirmish of the week.

With over 3,000m of climbing between Rue and Vucherens, stage 2 is relentlessly undulating, before stage 3 delivers a series of circuits around the medieval town of Orbe. The Col Mollendruz is the toughest climb of the day, stretching out for some 17km. The final 8.8km of this ascent average 6.2%, before the last 32km from the summit will all prove downhil to the finish line.

There will be a pair of category two climbs on stage 4, as well as a pair of category one challenges. The last major obstacle of the stage from Broc will be a second ascent of the Jaunpass (8.3km at 8%), before a 16.5km stretch to the line in Charmey. This will be the shortest road stage of the week but still include over 3,000m of climbing.

To end the six-day Tour de Romandie, stage 5 will bring the one and only mountaintop finish on Sunday, 3 May. From Lucens to Leysin, the final stage extends for 178.1km, and packs in 3,475m of elevation gain.

Overlooking both the Rhône Valley and Lake Geneva, the summit finish at Leysin will come at the end of a 15-km long climb. The average gradient of this test is 6%, but the maximum pitches ramp up to 14%, and will certainly prove a fitting way to end the 79th edition of this historic race.