Pogačar's crash doesn't just put his Worlds defence in doubt, it complicates next season's plans – Sean Kelly's Vuelta column

I fear that Tadej Pogačar's abandonment of La Vuelta a España on Saturday could mark the end of his season. We know he underwent an operation on his collarbone yesterday. However, the fracture to his vertebrae could make it a more complicated recovery than just a straightforward collarbone fracture – which is a two-week job for professional cyclists.

We won't know for certain until the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider is out of hospital and we get a clearer picture of his condition, but from what people are saying and what I've been looking at, it could be several weeks.

It might therefore be too difficult for him to get back into shape for his end-of-season goals, notably the World Championships in Montréal, the Europeans on his home roads of Slovenia, and a tilt at a record-breaking sixth Il Lombardia. Saturday could well have been the end of his season.

I suspect there'll be a lot of his fellow riders with a keen interest in the outcome of Pogačar's operation, thinking to themselves, 'I have a much better chance of winning a rainbow jersey now.'

Perhaps more disappointing for Pogačar than potentially missing out on the chance to make it three world championship titles in a row, or break the record in Lombardy, is the fact that La Vuelta's red jersey still eludes him. He was going to tick it off this year, and then that would be done, but now he's going to have to think about when he will return to the Spanish Grand Tour, because that's the type of champion he is; he doesn't want any races missing from his palmarès. It certainly complicates matters further for next season.

Not bad bike handling, just bad luck

Looking at the crash more closely, it appears to have been just one loose stone, and he had no idea what was on the road ahead. I suspect his hands slipped off the handlebars because of the way he went over the bike and banged off the Visma-Lease a Bike riders – it's just a bit of bad luck, unfortunately. And in fairness to Pogačar, one of his many great attributes is his bike handling. You can only really count a handful of occasions where he's come unstuck. And he's only suffered serious fractures on this occasion and at the 2023 Liège-Bastogne-Liège, when he fractured his wrist in a similar incident.

While those are both unlucky, his avoidance of crashes isn't down to luck; it's because he's a naturally strong bike handler. Going downhill in the bunch, in windy conditions or in echelons on the flat stages, we've seen it so many times, and that's what makes him so difficult to challenge in these Grand Tours. I've said that many times before; there's no weak point.

Even on those occasions where he's had dicey moments, like at Paris-Roubaix or Strade Bianche last year when he went too hot into a corner, he managed to get away unscathed. While Milan-San Remo this year was purely a crash I put down to bike racing – it's nothing to do with bike handling.

So Saturday's incident is something he'll probably be sat in hospital thinking about, and cursing, because there was nothing he could do.

One silver lining is that this incident came at this point in the season, rather than at or in the build-up to the Tour de France. For a rider targeting a spot in the general classification at this race, maybe a top-three or top-five, it wouldn't be the end of the world to bow out early. But when you're in a position like Pogačar's, in the maillot rojo and riding towards Granada at a canter, with a really favourable World Championships course on the horizon too, it's going to be a disappointment. It could be a whole lot worse, though.

Six or seven riders could still win La Vuelta

Reflecting on the now Pogačar-less La Vuelta, when you look at Sunday's stage, in particular the final mountain, the racing was great. It was on all the way until the final two kilometres, with plenty of suspense. Who will win the stage? Who will gain time on who? Who could lose time? I hate to say it, but if we had Pogačar there, he'd probably have ridden away from the rest of the bunch and arrived 40 seconds ahead of his closest rival, essentially killing off any suspense with four or five kilometres, maybe even more, still to race.

So the stage had a lot more suspense in the final. Of course, you can't deny or lament what Pogačar does on these occasions; it's amazing stuff. But the racing isn't typically as exciting as it was on Sunday, or as it will be throughout the mountaintop finishes coming up this week.

Which rider comes to the fore over the days to come and fills that Pogačar-shaped hole remains to be seen. You could make an argument for each of the top six or seven riders in the GC for why they could win La Vuelta.

The current leader, Enric Mas, looks to be riding the wave of the red jersey, and he's been impressive. I've always marked the Movistar man as a 'follower', following moves but rarely ever attacking himself, so I wondered how he would ride now, with the leader's jersey on his back and all eyes on him, but he did so magnificently.

However, there's no shortage of riders to knock Mas off his perch. Richard Carapaz is one man who has come into this race carrying good form from the Tour de France and is a dangerous fox in the high mountains, but will fatigue catch up with him come the final week?

If four-time winner Primož Roglič stays where he is in the standings for the individual time trial, then he's going to be dangerous too. The Slovenian had ridden fewer than 30 racedays before La Vuelta, and I've heard grumblings that he's not proving great value for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe's money, but another Grand Tour title will surely change all that.

Oscar Onley, like Roglič, has also had his injury issues this campaign, and the Netcompany-Ineos rider has shifted his focus to a La Vuelta GC bid as a result. He's clearly got some good form to be up there on Sunday, and perhaps will only get stronger as the race goes on.

It's crazy to think we've still got two more full weeks of racing to come, considering the drama that La Vuelta has already delivered. With several serious mountain days in both weeks, it's going to be a difficult and tactically interesting battle, that's for certain.