All for One: How UAE Team Emirates XRG Is Built Around Pogačar — A 2026 Season Case Study

In the world of professional road cycling, “one man’s rise” is never a solo affair. When Tadej Pogačar took his fifth Tour de France title in 2026 and pushed his career Monument tally to 13, it was the result of UAE Team Emirates XRG, a UCI WorldTeam, aligning an entire year’s resources, personnel, and race rhythm toward a single goal.

This article doesn’t talk about abstract “team spirit.” Instead, it uses several clearly documented moments from the 2026 season to look at the concrete things this team actually does.

The First Thing: Getting the Leader Back Alive

Milan-San Remo on March 21, 2026, is the race that best illustrates what “building around one man” means.

With 32.5 km remaining, before the Cipressa, Pogačar hit the deck in a crash that also brought down Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert in the same incident. This was the worst possible place for a crash in a one-day Monument—the attack point was right ahead, and the peloton was surging.

What happened next is where the team’s value truly showed: Florian Vermeersch and Felix Großschartner escorted Pogačar back to the peloton.

Taiwanese riders who have done the holiday group rides over the Beiyi Highway or the Yangjin P-word route can probably appreciate how hard this is: with the front group pushing at full throttle, two riders had to take turns on the front, dragging a leader who had just hit the deck back into the bunch, with nearly all of the power cost borne by the escorts. This wasn’t a bonus—it was the dividing line between the leader continuing the race or not.

The Second Thing: Putting the Leader at the Attack Point

After rejoining the group, the team didn’t stop. Records show that Brandon McNulty and Isaac Del Toro then took over the pace-setting, and Pogačar launched his attack with 24.2 km remaining, 2.5 km before the top of the Cipressa, taking van der Poel and Tom Pidcock with him.

There’s a detail here that’s often overlooked: the point of pace-setting isn’t just “going faster”—it’s determining what position, what heart rate, and what section of road the leader attacks from. When teammates hold a speed that compresses the peloton without forcing the leader to empty the tank early, the leader can leave the bunch at the exact second he chooses, in the most complete state possible.

That day, Pogačar edged out Pidcock by half a wheel in the sprint on Via Roma to take his first Milan-San Remo. Half a wheel—if any single piece of that escort or pace-setting had been missing, that result could easily have flipped.

The Third Thing: Turning the Race into a War of Attrition Early

If San Remo was “rescue plus escort,” then the Tour of Flanders on April 5 was another mode entirely: deliberately stretching the race out.

In that race, the team went to the front on the Molenberg (with over 100 km remaining). This was an ambitious decision—opening up with more than 100 km to go was a declaration that the entire rest of the race would be ridden at high intensity.

What followed: Pogačar attacked with 55 km remaining on the second ascent of the Oude Kwaremont, with only van der Poel and Remco Evenepoel able to follow; he dropped Evenepoel on the Paterberg; and on the final Oude Kwaremont ascent he dropped van der Poel (leading by just 6 seconds at the summit), before gradually extending his lead to solo to victory.

Note that “leading by just 6 seconds at the summit.” This means at the decisive moment, the gap was razor-thin. And what kept the rivals from clawing back those 6 seconds at that point was the sustained pressure of those 100 kilometers starting from the Molenberg.

The effect of the team opening up early isn’t dropping anyone in the moment—it’s deducting everyone’s savings in advance.

The Fourth Thing: Developing Teammates Who Can Win on Their Own

The 2026 UAE roster wasn’t a bunch of pure worker bees. Just look at the final general classification of the 2026 Tour de France:

Isaac Del Toro finished 3rd overall and Juan Ayuso 7th overall—both are teammates. Del Toro also won the stage on S2 of that edition.

This is a fairly rare structure: a team that simultaneously has a five-time-winning leader and two young riders capable of cracking the top ten overall in a Grand Tour. The advantage is obvious—opponents find it very hard to gang up on Pogačar with a “many against one” approach, because the teammates themselves are a threat. The cost is equally obvious, and that’s a topic for another article.

A Small Extension for Amateur Group Rides

Scaling this down to Taiwan’s holiday group rides, the logic can be applied on a smaller scale:

• If someone gets dropped, someone should go back for them. The cost of one rider chasing the group alone is far higher than two riders rotating to bring him back.
• Position before the climb matters more than the climb itself. Before sections like Wuling or Fengguizui, teammates can save you the wasteful effort of “queueing to overtake” and “being forced to shift gears.”
• If you want someone to perform, someone has to be willing to spend first. The power cost of pace-setting is real, and it never shows up on the results sheet.

The reason UAE Team Emirates XRG in the 2026 season looks like “Pogačar’s team” isn’t because he’s the only one riding—it’s because every single element was arranged so that he could appear at the right time, in the right position, in the most complete state.

(The race events and results cited in this article are public records; the tactical explanations are general observations and do not represent the team’s internal decision-making for those races.)

Related Reading

• What Can Taiwanese Riders Learn from Pogačar? The Transferable Parts of Attacking Riding and the Parts That Can Never Be Learned
• Breaking Down Pogačar’s 2026 Tour de France Five-Win: Five Stages, Four Mountain Zones, One Way of Winning?
• Pogačar’s Attack Timing: The Same Logic Behind 78 km, 55 km, 24.2 km, and 7.2 km
• Annual Periodization for Amateur Riders: Borrowing from the Pro Season Structure to Design a Training Calendar Peaking at Wuling