Vuelta a España: The Missing Piece in Pogačar's Grand Tour Sweep — Why Has He Delayed Filling It?

Tadej Pogačar’s résumé has two conspicuous blanks. One is Paris-Roubaix (the last of the five Monuments), and the other is the Vuelta a España.

He holds 6 Grand Tour overall titles: 5 Tour de France wins (2020, 2021, 2024, 2025, 2026) plus 1 Giro d’Italia win (2024). Of the three Grand Tours, only the Vuelta is missing.

And this blank is especially intriguing because it’s different from Roubaix—Roubaix is a race he went to and lost; the Vuelta is one he simply hasn’t gone to win yet.

The Current State of the Three Grand Tours

A Career Grand Tour Triple is an extremely rare achievement in cycling history. For Pogačar, having six Grand Tour titles yet missing one signature piece is something frequently brought up in the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) debate.

Why Has He Delayed Challenging the Vuelta?

To understand this, you first need to understand a pro rider’s season structure. This isn’t a matter of “just deciding to go”—it’s a trade-off in physical conditioning and goal allocation across an entire year.

1. The Tour Is the Absolute Priority, and the Vuelta Comes Right After It

The Tour ends in July, and the Vuelta starts around late August. For a rider whose career core goal is the Tour overall title, the month after the Tour is a recovery period, not the time for another three-week race.

How brutal was Pogačar’s 2026 Tour? He took 5 stage wins (S3, S6, S10, S14, S19), including the Tourmalet, the Bastille Day stage to Le Lioran, a 7.2 km solo break on the Col du Glandon, and S19 at Alpe d’Huez—timed by Reuters at 35 minutes 27 seconds, reported as a record, more than a minute faster than Marco Pantani’s old mark. A three-week race like that isn’t something you can simply repeat after two weeks of rest.

2. His Season Already Spans Both Ends of the Calendar

The biggest difference between Pogačar and many pure Grand Tour riders is that he wins all year long. Take 2026 as an example:

• 3/7 Strade Bianche: 4th career win (event record). Attacked with 78 km remaining on the Monte Sante Marie gravel sector, dropped everyone, and soloed to the finish. The Colle Pinzuto section was even named after him before the race.
• 3/21 Milan-San Remo: 1st career win, beating Tom Pidcock by half a wheel on the Via Roma
• 4/5 Tour of Flanders: 3rd career win
• 4/12 Paris-Roubaix: 2nd place
• Liège-Bastogne-Liège: 4th career win, 45 seconds ahead
• Tour de Romandie: Overall winner
• Tour de Suisse: Overall winner
• July Tour de France: Overall winner + 5 stage wins
• Scheduled 10/10 Il Lombardia: Going for a 6th win

See the problem? From March to October, this calendar has no empty slots left. The Vuelta sits right between the Tour and Lombardia—exactly the window he uses to prepare for the autumn classics. Fitting in a Vuelta would mean sacrificing Lombardia (his home turf, where he’s already won five straight), or sacrificing Monument accumulation in the spring.

3. The World Championships Fall in the Same Window

The road World Championships typically land in late September, which is around the tail end of the Vuelta or just after it ends. Pogačar has already won 2 World Championship gold medals (2024, 2025) and in 2025 became the first rider in history to defend both the Tour and the Worlds in the same year. In 2025 he also added his first European Championship title.

In other words, August–September is already a period with clear output for him—it’s just that the output comes in the form of the Worlds rainbow jersey, not the Vuelta’s red jersey.

The Arithmetic of Trade-offs: What Is One Vuelta Worth?

Quantifying this: if he decides to go all-in on the Vuelta in 2027 or some later year, the approximate opportunity costs would be:

And in return, he gets the Career Grand Tour Triple—a historic label. This isn’t a question of whether it’s worth it; it’s a question of how he wants to be remembered in history.

Under What Circumstances Would He Go?

Although there’s currently no public Vuelta plan, reasoning from the season structure, a few scenarios seem more plausible:

Scenario 1: After Winning a Sixth Tour

His current 5 titles already tie him with Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault, and Indurain for the most all-time. Once he gets a sixth and stands alone at the top, the marginal value of the Tour will drop, and his season priorities could be redistributed.

Scenario 2: A Year When the Tour Goes Wrong

In 2022 and 2023, he lost to Jonas Vingegaard, finishing second both years. If a similar situation happens again, using the August Vuelta as a season-saving move is a reasonable option.

Scenario 3: A Late-Career “Completion Phase”

Many riders, after their peak, shift their goals toward items still unchecked on the list. Pogačar’s unfinished business currently includes: Paris-Roubaix, the Vuelta overall title, an Olympic road race gold, and catching Merckx’s 19 Monuments. These four differ in difficulty and timing, and the Vuelta is actually the most “can be postponed” of the four—because it doesn’t require a specific body type like Roubaix does, nor does it come only once every four years like the Olympics.

How Taiwanese Riders See This

The Vuelta is actually quite familiar to Taiwanese riders: its stage design is known for short, brutally steep summit finishes, with gradients often exceeding 15%, which in character is closer to many climbing routes in Taiwan than the Tour’s long, gradual climbs. If you’ve ridden the Yangjinshan P-shaped road with its constantly changing gradients, or the painful final kilometers of Wuling, the Vuelta’s short, steep finales will resonate especially strongly.

Theoretically, this route profile—dense with short, steep summit finishes—suits Pogačar’s explosive climbing style very well. That also makes the question of “when will he actually go” even more compelling—it’s not that he can’t ride it; it’s that he only has one August per year.

Will the Career Grand Tour Triple puzzle piece be filled in? The answer lies not in his legs, but in his calendar.

Related Reading

• Pogačar Crowned for a Fifth Time: 2026 Tour de France Overview, a Year Tied with Four Legends
• Paris-Roubaix: The Final Piece for Pogačar’s Sweep of All Five Monuments
• 26 Tour de France Stage Wins: Pogačar’s Harvest Roadmap from 2020 to 2026
• The GOAT Debate: Pogačar vs. Merckx and Hinault, and Why Cross-Generational Comparisons Are Destined to Remain Unresolved