Tadej Pogačar

Tadej Pogačar: The Rider Whose Attacks Break the Race

There is a number cycling analysts use to explain why Tadej Pogačar's rivals cannot simply chase him down: his functional threshold power sits around seven watts per kilogram, a level so far above his competitors that, as one power analysis put it, "all of his zones are 50-100 watts higher than yours" — meaning that when he is merely riding hard, the rest of the peloton is already at its limit.

A Late Switch From Football

Tadej Pogačar was born September 21, 1998, in Klanec, in the Komenda municipality of Slovenia, and initially played football before following his older brother Tilen into cycling with the Rog Ljubljana club at age nine. Coach Andrej Hauptman first noticed him in 2011 racing against older riders — Pogačar appeared to be struggling at the back, until Hauptman realized he was about to lap the field. Hauptman went on to guide him through his under-23 years and later joined UAE Team Emirates as a sporting director, bringing Pogačar with him in 2019 at age twenty. He signed a contract extension with the team through 2030 in 2024, reportedly worth €50 million over five years with a €200 million buyout clause.

Four Yellow Jerseys

Pogačar has won the Tour de France four times: in 2020, at 21, becoming the second-youngest winner ever; in 2021, sweeping the general classification, mountains and young rider jerseys simultaneously, something no rider had done before; in 2024, completing the rare Giro-Tour double last achieved in 1998; and in 2025, beating rival Jonas Vingegaard by more than four minutes. In 2024 he also became only the third male cyclist, after Eddy Merckx in 1974 and Stephen Roche in 1987, to win the Giro, the Tour and the World Championship road race in the same season — while also winning two of cycling's five Monument one-day classics, a combination no one else has managed.

Attacking From a Hundred Kilometers Out

What separates Pogačar from most modern stage racers is a willingness to attack far earlier than tactics normally dictate. At both the 2024 and 2025 World Championships he launched solo moves more than sixty kilometers from the finish and simply rode away from the field alone. He has described his own approach as a "stupid instinct" — launching long-range attacks that contradict the conservative, wheel-sucking racing that dominates the modern peloton, and which fans and rivals alike credit with making the sport more watchable again. On the Plateau de Beille climb during the 2024 Giro, he beat Marco Pantani's 24-year-old record for the ascent by more than three minutes, a performance he called the best of his career.

The Physiology Behind the Attacks

The power data explains why those attacks work. During one summer's racing, analysts recorded Pogačar sustaining roughly 7.2 watts per kilogram for over sixteen minutes on a major climb, and a vertical ascent rate of 2,525 meters per hour on shorter efforts — a pace most competitive amateurs can only hold for thirty seconds in a sprint. When he attacks, rivals chasing him are forced into an anaerobic effort they cannot sustain; the only proven defense is a coordinated, patient group effort rather than any individual chase, and even that often fails.

Five Monuments, Five Times Over

Beyond the Grand Tours, Pogačar has won thirteen of cycling's Monument classics, including a record five consecutive victories at Il Lombardia, equaling a mark set by Fausto Coppi. In 2025 he became the first rider ever to finish on the podium of all five Monuments in a single season, and he is only the third male rider, after Louison Bobet and Eddy Merckx, to have won both the Tour de France and the Tour of Flanders. Eddy Merckx himself, after watching Pogačar's 2024 World Championship win, said, "It's obvious that he is now above me" — a remark he later clarified applied to that specific performance rather than a career comparison.

Personal Life

Pogačar is engaged to Urška Žigart, a Slovenian professional cyclist and national road and time-trial champion. In 2024, after Žigart was left off Slovenia's Olympic team, Pogačar withdrew from selection for the Paris Games himself, citing extreme fatigue — a decision widely read as a gesture of solidarity. His primary rivalries, with Jonas Vingegaard in the Grand Tours and Mathieu van der Poel in the one-day classics, are both frequently described by cycling journalists as the best the sport has produced since the 1990s.

Why Tadej Is Called a Genius

The case for Pogačar is physiological and tactical rather than intellectual: an extraordinary, measurable power output combined with an instinct for when to spend it that defies conventional race strategy. Cycling analysts frame his dominance in almost purely quantitative terms — watts per kilogram, vertical ascent rates — which is a way of saying his gift is bodily rather than cerebral, even if the timing of his attacks shows genuine tactical intelligence. The counter-case, voiced by critics on social media and in the press rather than by rivals on record, is the shadow that has hung over cycling since its doping-scandal decades: any rider producing numbers this far outside historical norms invites suspicion. Pogačar has addressed this directly rather than dismissing it: "For sure I am not angry about it. They are uncomfortable questions because the cycling history was really bad. I totally understand why there are all of these questions." No positive test or formal allegation has been substantiated against him; the skepticism remains a structural feature of the sport's history rather than specific evidence against him.

Legacy

Still under thirty, Pogačar has already spent a record 258 weeks ranked the world's number one rider and produced what many in the sport call the greatest single season in cycling history in 2024. His rivalry with Jonas Vingegaard, with the pair finishing first and second at five consecutive Tours de France, is already being compared to the great two-rider rivalries of cycling's past.

Achievements

• Golden Order of Merit
• Competed at the 2020 Summer Olympics