Tadey Pogachar (UAE Team Emirates) may be making his first appearance at GP Quebec on Friday since winning the Tour de France on July 21, but the top rider in men's cycling regrets neither his schedule choice nor his decision to skip the Paris Olympics He has no regrets about his choice of schedule or about skipping the Paris Olympics.

For the Slovenian, the 52 days he spent without a race number on his back is the same number of race days he rode in 2024, during which he won 21 races, nearly all of them at a commanding pace.

He was set to compete in the Olympics, but withdrew 12 days before the road race due to fatigue and later because his partner, Urška Zigato, was not selected by the Slovenian federation. However, despite his fresh face, Pogachar, who dominated most of the Tour's 21 stages and led the team to a historic victory, was exhausted.

“I didn't like the fact that there were so many people recommending the Olympics and saying, ‘You should go to the Olympics, it's easy to win medals.’ Nothing is easy in cycling. Especially in the Olympics on a course like this,” Pogachar said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon ahead of the GP Quebec and Montreal.

“I think I made the right decision because the day after the Tour de France I was completely destroyed.

“My legs were tired but I think it was a hard season from Strade Bianche to the Tour de France. I was on full gas the whole time, I was doing super well, and then after the Tour I switched off and my body went into shutdown mode, so I was pretty out of shape for the first two weeks.”

But after a big racing block from May to July, enjoying “the first decent summer in a long time” and experiencing “normal life,” he is now fully refreshed and ready to get back to racing again.

The day after Pogachar arrived in Canada, surrounded by the media as a top rider, he immediately regained his top-level racing experience. But while it is no secret that he is here to prepare for the World Championships in Zurich, Pogachar did not take anything for granted as he faced two grueling and challenging one-day races.

“Quebec is a fairly open race, but in the past, attacks didn't go very well and were often taken into sprints.

“But we have a strong team here. I think I can race hard and we'll see how the legs turn out to see if I can attack or just wait for the sprint.”

The Slovenian rider admitted, of course, that he “would win both if I could,” but cited last year's Quebec winner, the impressive Arnaud Des Liers (Lotto Doustony), as a key rival for Friday's race, and any final 16 laps in the city He admitted that a slip-up could be fatal to a good result.

“I think De Lier will be a big force in the sprint, and I think Michael Matthews will be a big force in the sprint, but it's a tough sprint, so if you make a little mistake on the last lap, you pay the price in the sprint,” Pogachar said.

He modestly assessed himself and said he would have a “pretty decent” run at the start of his first race back after resuming proper training two weeks after the Tour.

“Two weeks after the Tour, I returned to systematic training and gradually recovered. [Usually after a long training period, the first race is not so good. However, earlier this year we saw the preparation of Strade Bianche, who won her debut race in 2024 with an 80km solo ride.

But when he played Nostradamus on the white gravel roads of Tuscany in March, he did not reveal which of Montreal's 17 laps he would perform his likely race-winning feat.

Pogachal also showed no signs of losing his tact at press time, mentioning the possibility of going to Disneyland while the team was at the Paris airport to solve a transportation problem.

“We made a mistake (in our estimated arrival time), but everything worked out and we arrived. I wanted to go to Disneyland and that would have been really nice, but the last part of Paris wasn't really convenient,” he laughed.

“A few of us were stuck in Paris for a while, but I arrived. I didn't have a suitcase, but all is well. Tadei Pogachal returned for the 2024 Congress.