As reigning World Champion following his unstoppable 101km ride to glory in Zürich last September, Tadej Pogačar has every right to wear the rainbow jersey whether he’s racing in the WorldTour, training at a team camp, or pootling around home roads in Monaco.
However, ahead of a UAE Team Emirates-XRG training ride at Pico Veleta on Tuesday, the Slovenian was spotted covering up his rainbow jersey with an all-black team-issue Pissei jersey.
While the bike was all black and white, too, he wasn’t going for colour coordination. The reason? Pogačar was setting off for a tune-up on his Colnago TT1 time trial bike, but instead, he was hiding rainbow stripes as he isn’t the world champion in that discipline. Of course, Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) holds the rainbow jersey in the time trial, having beaten Filippo Ganna to the title by six seconds in Zürich.
There are no UCI regulations preventing riders of any level from wearing a world champion’s jersey during training. Pogačar is, of course, prohibited from wearing the rainbow stripes during a time trial.
“World champions must wear their jersey in all events in the discipline, speciality and category in which they won their title, and no other event, until the evening of the day before the commencement of the next edition of the world championships of said discipline, speciality and category,” reads UCI regulation 1.3.063.
Still, Pogačar stuck to a piece of cycling etiquette and covered his rainbow stripes for his time on the time trial bike.
The video, caught by ‘jmisniak’ and published on Lucas’ cycling blog on Facebook, caught Pogačar tucking the rainbow-piped sleeves of his jersey under the black jersey to cover them up.
During training rides, Pogačar always takes a non-rainbow jersey with him for this express occasion. This fact was revealed by his UAE teammate Rune Herregodts during an interview with Het Nieuwsblad back in February.
“Do you know what I thought was great? During training, we sometimes switch from a regular bike to a time trial bike. Then he always insists on taking a regular jersey with him, in addition to the rainbow jersey he was wearing,” Herregodts told the Belgian paper.
“He doesn’t want to sit on his time trial bike with his rainbow jersey. ‘Out of respect for Remco’, he says. He would rather ride with a jersey in his pocket all the time.
“He even rolls up the rainbow bands on his pants when he’s on his time trial bike. Fancy, right? In terms of respect, that counts.”
Pogačar’s training ride at his team’s training camp in Sierra Nevada, Spain, came ahead of his return to racing at the Critérium du Dauphiné, where he’ll face off against Evenepoel and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) ahead of the Tour de France.
The Critérium du Dauphiné route features three summit finishes as well as a mid-race 17.7km time trial, while other general classification contenders at the race include Enric Mas (Movistar), Carlos Rodríguez (Ineos Grenadiers), and Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe).
