Sometimes there is a person who knows before anyone else what Tadej Pogacar is going to do in the race. And it is not Matxin, the sports director of the UAE team. Sometimes, the Slovenian cyclist makes a bet with his masseuse. “What do you have at stake...?” He tells her, between jokes and good vibes. This is what happened in the preview of the Strade Bianche. Pogacar left all his rivals stunned by leaving alone 80 km from the finish line. “I thought he would attack 100. We had made a bet,” reveals Joseba Elguezabal, who was left without a prize.
This Basque from Gatika has become almost a talisman for the cyclist. “We have a relationship that goes beyond pure work,” he tells La Vanguardia. It is not surprising then that in the WhatsApp photo of him it is Pogacar who is holding Izei, Joseba's 14-month-old son, in his arms. On the massage table, Elguezabal and Pogacar have established a close friendship, full of confidences and music. “He has the code for my speaker and he plays what he wants. I almost know what he needs just by looking at him.”
The curious thing is that the masseuse entered the Slovenian's circle of trust by chance. Both arrived in the UAE in 2019. “The first concentration was in Tarragona. The team was starting to get big and had signed cyclists like Aru, Dan Martin, Gaviria, Kristoff and Henao. I knew him by hearsay because he had won the 2018 Tour del Porvenir,” he recalls. “At first we didn't agree much; I was in charge of Martin's massages. It was in the Vuelta a España that I started to get to know him and we became good friends.”
Pogacar, at 20 years old, won three stages and was third. They were his first exhibitions, and Matxin realized that the partnership worked. “Where he goes, I am.”
The Slovenian's legs are dynamite, explosive in his attacks and sprints, resistant in the classics and light in the mountains. And the Biscayan is the one who has the mission of molding them, relaxing them and recovering them after each day. The million dollar question is what specific care they require. “The most important thing is to find a common ground in terms of toughness. “Everyone likes it in a different way,” says Elguezabal, who previously worked at Caja Rural, Seguros Bilbao and the Athletic youth team: “I treated Nico Williams there.”
Joseba is clear about the secret of Pogacar's muscles. “Tadej is the milk, number one. The big difference is that it barely retains fatigue. His recovery capacity is extraordinary,” he explains and clarifies: “Before the massage was only on the legs, but now it is on the entire body.”
The Slovenian's routine is that he wants the massage before dinner. “I would tell you that 98% of the time it is like that. Sometimes you have two hours and other times you arrive at the hotel at eight or so, which is almost dinner time. Luckily, the team has a kitchen truck and cooks, and if we take too long, nothing happens because the food will be hot and perfect.”
Last week, in which Pogacar dominated the Volta a Catalunya at will with four stage victories, Joseba did not separate himself from the leader of the UAE. Apart from sculpting his muscles, his job is also to guard him when he crosses the finish line. “In the end we try to protect and make sure that nothing happens to him. Many people want to touch him and take photos of him. They don't understand that he arrives tired and with his heart rate racing. He is very vulnerable and we try to minimize the risk, let him know that we are with him at all times and give him a little respite,” explains that bodyguard role.
But the masseuse still has another mission: to care for the spirit in the privacy of the table. Joseba listens to the genius in the good times and the not so good ones. “We hardly talk about cycling, what am I going to teach the best in the world? When he does well, I congratulate him, and when he doesn't win I try to calm him down and give him encouragement for the next day. "Always, the one who expects the most from Pogacar is himself."
However, there are two days that are very marked by the cyclist's reaction. “The time trial of the last Tour de France was a huge blow for him. And he was not 25th, he came second, but it hurt him a lot,” he reveals. He understood that it was impossible. The next day he stayed at the col de la Loze. On the other hand, “the day I have seen him enjoy a victory the most was last year's Tour of Flanders.” Even more than with his first yellow jersey in 2020.
Even so, he, who is not always close to the cyclist, avoids the role of confidant, something that falls to the girlfriend, Urska Zigart, also a cyclist. “Tadej and Urska are one. When she is happy, he shines brighter. In the end they are still two young boys.” For almost everything else, Tadej Pogacar trusts Joseba.
