Pogačar reflects on an extremely successful week at Tour de Romandie

The favourite's role fulfilled, four stage wins and an overall title in the bag — and a reminder to the rest of the peloton of exactly who is in charge: Tadej Pogačar delivered an extremely successful week at the Tour de Romandie. Afterwards, the Slovenian world champion of UAE Team Emirates-XRG looked back on a fine six days — with a special word of thanks for the fans.

Pogačar was beaten in the prologue, but once the road stages began, it all clicked into place. The Slovenian won stages 1, 2, 4 and 5 and was visibly a cut above everyone else all week. He took the overall in dominant fashion — though on the final day, thanks to Florian Lipowitz, he had to dig genuinely deep.

"It was a tough day," Pogačar breathed in the flash interview. "Bahrain came to help us — I think they wanted to go for the stage win, and also to move up in the classification. That worked well for us. It was a high tempo all day." Bahrain Victorious did indeed take responsibility for a large portion of the final climb on Sunday, riding in the service of Lenny Martinez.

In the end it was not Martinez, but Lipowitz who opened the real finale. "On the climb, Florian attacked first. He did it very well. Luckily I was able to survive on his wheel." The two rode towards the line together, with Primož Roglič apparently just able to rejoin. "In the end he went very deep in the finale — from a long way out. It was a real fight all the way to the finish line."

The excellent form carried over from Liège-Bastogne-Liège continues. "I didn't really know what to expect, so I'm very happy. Every win is important. It's always important to win and to finish off the work of the team," said the world champion, who had visibly enjoyed the fans and the atmosphere at the Tour de Romandie.

"It was fantastic. I think all the kids came out of school to watch this week. That was really beautiful to see. At the weekend too, with all the families and children. There were so many fans and so many signs with my name. It was really wonderful to race here in Romandie this week," he concluded.