THE MAKING OF TADEJ POGACAR

In the first of a new series delving into the origin stories of great riders, James Shrubsall tracks the progress of the Tour champion

- James Shrubsall

Thump-thump. An insistent knocking roused Ben Hill from his hotel bed. The Ljubljana-Gusto rider had been sleeping soundly, getting some much-earned rest from his endeavours in what was proving a fruitful Tour of Slovenia. The team were having a great race, with Hill having worn the leader’s jersey on stage three. What’s more his team-mate, an unassuming 19-year-old named Tadej Pogačar was edging closer to a fine fourth on GC. 11 pm, noted Hill, as he stumbled bleary-eyed to the hotel door. He opened it and rubbed his eyes: standing in front of him was a gleeful Pogačar. Brandishing pizza.

"He was like, 'Oh, I got some pizza sticks cos I was hungry!" says Hill. 'He was delivering the pizza sticks. He woke me up out of bed, but he was still going."

He can deliver

It was Pogačar perfectly illustrated. The Slovenian was known on the team as being laid-back, polite, fun-loving, and for his ability to tear the legs off all-comers.

For the Ljubljana team, Continental minnows facing off with the World Tour's big fish, Pogačar's fourth place would be the best GC result they'd ever had by some way - alongside the same rider's fifth place the year before, 2017. And yet here he was, in the witching hour, waking his team-mates with pizza sticks.

“He was a lot of fun,” remembers Hill, an Aussie sprinter who rode on the Ljubljana team with Pogačar during the 2018 season. “We didn’t really do too much off the bike, but we’d go to the go-kart track. That was a pretty common team event, and he was always one of the facilitators behind that.”