‘Well for sure it’s flattering, but I don’t know,’ says Tadej Pogačar. ‘You always have people arguing over it, but you cannot look over a whole century of cycling to measure who is the greatest of all time. Times change.’
And how they have. Until this year, cycling had only ever seen two Triple Crowns and talk of a third seemed ridiculous. It’s not that Eddy Merckx (1974) or Stephen Roche (1987) were somehow better than today’s best, they say, it’s that racing is so different now. Teams and riders pour everything into almost single-race seasons, making for a highly competitive, highly specialist landscape in which the generalist champion is banished. Climber, time-trialist, Classics rider, sprinter. Pick one. Then came Pogačar.
In May, the UAE Team Emirates rider won the Giro d’Italia; in July it was the Tour de France; then on 29th September he did the unthinkable and triumphed at the World Championships Road Race. So surely, even if it isn’t just yet, Pogačar is poised to become the GOAT. After all, he’s just 26 years old but already has three Tours de France (including 17 stage wins), a Giro, the rainbow bands, plus a wealth of Monuments and Classics to his name – and Merckx retired at 33.
‘But it’s a long way to go and cycling is so unpredictable,’ Pogačar tells Cyclist. ‘We start our careers so much earlier now, many at 18 years old, and we will maybe have shorter careers because we start to push the body so much earlier.’
It’s a common thought that swirls around cycling and indeed many sports – football is a prime example of stratospheric rise and early burnout – but it might be noted that Pogačar waited until his 21st birthday to compete in a Grand Tour. Furthermore, it’s not just starry-eyed fans who are tipping him for absolute greatness. One of the first things Mark Cavendish did after taking his record 35th Tour stage win was to embrace the Slovenian, grab his face in a faux-threatening manner and say, ‘Don’t beat it.’ How telling was that?
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‘Yeah,’ answers Pogačar somewhat bashfully, before steering expertly away from the subject. ‘Mark and I go really well together. I consider him as a friend but also like a mentor. He gives me great advice, and when he won that stage I think the whole of cycling was super-happy and proud. He’s the GOAT of sprinting.’
Over the course of our interview, this becomes a hallmark of Tadej Pogačar: a calm and wise head on bewitchingly talented shoulders; ever the diplomat, always the humble champion and never taking things too seriously.
Stellar year
This year was a season for the ages that, even if Pogačar rails against it, most pundits agree was even better than Merckx at his imperious best. Early spring saw wins at Strade Bianche, Volta a Catalunya and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. The Giro in May – his debut no less – saw Pogačar wear the pink jersey from Stage 2, taking six stages along the way and finishing up in Rome nearly ten minutes ahead of second place Dani Martínez, the biggest margin in 59 years.
A mere 34 days later Pogačar was back racing at the Tour and by the time he topped the podium in Nice he’d taken six stages and become the first rider since Marco Pantani (in 1998), and only the seventh ever, to win a Giro-Tour double.
A win at the GP de Montréal followed, then a fortnight later came a World Championships display so audacious it would have made history on its own, with Pogačar attacking from 100km out then breaking away solo with 51km to go. A brace of Italian wins capped off the season, the first at the Giro dell’Emilia, the second at Il Lombardia – the latter another masterclass of derring-do in which he launched a 48km solo breakaway to win by the biggest margin since (guess who) Merckx in 1971. This was his fourth win in a row under falling leaves.
It’s extraordinary stuff, and while it’s the performances that make the headlines, it’s Pogačar’s ability to shrug off failure – and indeed criticism, to which he is not immune – that might be his greatest asset.
Last year’s Tour de France produced an iconic and rarely seen moment for a sport so wrapped up in poker faces. With around 8km to go on the Col de la Loze, Pogačar radioed his team and in so doing broadcast to the world, ‘I’m gone, I’m dead.’
Jersey unzipped to the waist, reeling after a drubbing in the previous day’s time-trial, with Jonas Vingegaard well on his way to opening up a seven-minute gap, you could forgive any rider for becoming mentally scarred. But Pogačar?
‘Ah, for me it was not that bad,’ he smiles. ‘I pick myself up quite fast. I think it’s actually harder for my family, friends, teammates.
‘My girlfriend [Liv-AlUla-Jayco rider Urška Žigart] just went home that day after the start, but by the time she got back she was already thinking she needed to come back to France to get me. But I was like, “No, it’s OK.” Those people were really broken and they felt for me. Sometimes knowing how it affects them is the hardest part.’
In the event, he raced on, even taking the penultimate stage despite Vingegaard’s unassailable lead. Of such instances, Pogačar remains philosophical and, like the well-drilled pro he is, doesn’t miss a PR trick in the process.
‘Everyone around you wants you to win. The team pays you to win. That’s pressure. But our team helps you, they care for you, they don’t blame you. So when I don’t win the Tour de France in 2022 and 2023, it’s no big deal.’
Summer heat
So came the 2024 summer and a new wave of pressure to handle. While Pogačar’s incredible Giro merely left riders such as Geraint Thomas quipping, ‘Alright son, you’ve had your fun. Let’s just have a nice quiet day tomorrow?’, some commentators were less kind despite a similarly dominant ride at the Tour. As good as Pogi is, they said, he’s flattered by an unfit Vingegaard, the Dane having been floored by a horror crash at the Tour of the Basque Country in April that left him with a collapsed lung and broken collarbone and ribs. Were the doubters right?
‘I don’t think he would have gone to the Tour if he was not in the best shape,’ says Pogačar in measured tones. ‘Visma-Lease a Bike are a really calculated team, they want to have everything planned quite perfectly. They really deal in the numbers so I think they know he’s in good shape.
‘I saw this on Stage 2 when we went to San Luca. We [Pogačar with a chasing Vingegaard] rode that climb – and it’s a short climb – almost half a minute faster than we did last year at the Giro dell’Emilia, and I was pushing really big watts so I knew that he was in really good shape.’
Still, Pogačar admits that ‘even if you can push for ten minutes the best power you ever do’, three weeks is a long time, and perhaps Vingegaard just didn’t have the racing in his legs. Yet there is another factor Pogačar doesn’t name but does allude to. The Vingegaard conundrum is perhaps a misnomer, because Pogačar also beat Remco Evenepoel, a previous World Champion in both road and time-trial who would go on to win a double-Olympic gold and second world TT title after the Tour. Hardly fish in a barrel.
Foe-weather friends
What – or rather who – could topple Pogačar in 2025? In predictable fashion he seems unfazed by the question, yet by no means dismissive.
‘Remco showed he’s capable of doing a Grand Tour really well. He’s one of the best cyclists in the world and surprises every time, with the Olympics after the Tour. He’s grown up a lot. There was a lot of pressure on him early on but he’s settled in now and can grow as a cyclist.’
Then there’s Vingegaard, but like Evenepoel and anyone else, Pogačar has a way of finding personal advantage in having such strong rivals.
‘It’s good for the sport to have such rivalries,’ he says. ‘We also have [Mathieu] van der Poel and Wout van Aert, and it creates a good image for cycling. But it also pushes us to go over the limits and to just train harder. We have this drive to beat each other, but it’s good and we have a good relationship. There is no hate around the peloton, just a lot of respect. I think it’s quite important to have this in mind and to be friendly with everybody, not least because if a guy bothers you but you don’t bother him, it’s your loss.’
But isn’t it strange, having to find it within yourself to not just beat but crush people you ostensibly think of as mates?
‘Yeah, but when you’re a kid you’re also in competition with your brother or sister or best friend, and this is the same,’ says Pogačar. ‘We should just be playing this game “cycling” and be happy we’re paid good money to win races.’
If this season was just ‘playing’, who knows what’s still to come?
Pogačar on…
…the charity, PlumeStrong
‘Every year I’m part of a crazy fundraiser, the PlumeStrong Cycling Challenge. This year it was five stages from Zurich to Venice, 824km and over 15,000m of climbing. We’re close to hitting our $1 million target and the money will be spent on building 15 schools in rural Sierra Leone with the charity we partner with, Street Child. If I can give them my time and that helps get a bit of recognition, I’m super-happy. It’s for a good cause.’
…the best way to win
‘I would always put sprint wins above coming in solo. When you cross the line in a bunch sprint and win, the adrenaline is high, the emotions are high and everything comes on instinct and you’re super-happy. But when you already know you’re going to win, like for 10km or 20km, it’s good but it’s not the same, and the feeling is more like a relief.’
…Tour de France routes
‘Yeah, they try to spice it up with cobbles or gravel, which I much prefer to 30kmh wind all day – that’s bigger chaos than a gravel stage. There’s negative energy in the peloton around such things, but that’s modern cycling. Would the ASO design a course to suit Remco? I mean, if they have a good internal friendship maybe, but I don’t think so.’
…wearing the yellow jersey
‘I hate it, but I got used to it. When you’re the leader every day you do an extra hour and a half. You have two flash interviews, France TV, Eurosport, then the podium ceremony, then the mixed zone with like 20 journalists you speak to. Then the press conference, then doping control. Sometimes the team bus doesn’t wait for me.’
…when to attack ‘It’s mostly on feel. I have this instinct in me. You need this animal energy to attack – if you’re really hungry and you feel no pain in the legs you can go, but when the legs are in pain and you’re suffering then you’re just hoping everyone else is suffering too and no one will attack.’
