The young phenom had just won his second straight Tour de France in commanding fashion, winning multiple stages and dispatching a field that included a four-time former winner. He looked set to reign over the race for years to come. Who might challenge him?
After Tadej Pogačar’s repeat win at the Tour, questions are being asked about whether pro cycling has entered the “Pogaczar” era. Pogačar himself refutes the idea, noting that one of his biggest rivals, fellow Slovenian Primož Roglič, had to drop out with crash injuries. He also pointed out other riders, ranging from 2019 Tour winner Egan Bernal to the supremely versatile Wout van Aert, who could stand in the way of a run to the record of five or more Tour titles.
All true. But on the other side of the ledger are some compelling facts. Pogačar is not even 23 years old yet and already has two Tour wins. Over his three years in the WorldTour, he has become increasingly unbeatable, with wins in four of his five stage races this year.
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He swept the Tour’s overall, best climber, and best young rider classifications for the second year in a row. His team, while not among the strongest in the race, has little to stand in the way of changing that. And at the 2021 Tour, at least, he seemed not only the strongest rider, but almost on another level to his competition.
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But the unnamed racer at the top of this story is not Pogačar. It was 1983 and 1984 Tour winner Laurent Fignon, who was just 24 at the time of his second win. As the arc of his career showed, outstanding success at a young age in racing is not always a guarantee of transcendant athleticism.
Can Pogačar be beaten? If so, how, and by whom? There are no sure things in pro cycling, but there are challenges if he wants to join the pantheon of all-time greats.
He has to stay healthy
Among young riders to burst onto the scene with Tour wins, a few recent names stand out: Bernal, of course, was just 22 when he won in 2019. Alberto Contador was 25 at his first win in 2007. Jan Ullrich was also 25 for his first victory in 1997, which could’ve been his second had he not been held back the year before to work for teammate Bjarne Riis.
But the riders who perhaps are most comparable to Pogačar are Fignon and Eddy Merckx, and their careers tell very different stories. Like Pogačar, both were outstanding young talents who won their first Tours at ages 23 and 24, respectively.
But Fignon’s promise was frustrated; after his repeat win in 1984, he’d never finish higher than second, while Merckx won four straight Tours starting in 1969, added a fifth in 1974 after not contesting the 1973 edition, and would very likely have won a sixth in 1975 had he not been assaulted and injured by a spectator early in the race. Like Pogačar, he swept the jersey competitions—green, polka-dot, and yellow—in his first Tour (the best young rider classification didn’t start until 1975.
The difference? Health. Fignon battled knee injuries and other issues that kept him out of the 1985 Tour and caused him to DNF in 1986, 1988, and 1990. A modern analogue to this is Bernal, who battled back injuries last year that eventually forced him out of the race. Merckx, by contrast, stayed largely healthy. His biggest problem when it came to staying in races was doping—he was caught three times, but penalties back then were basically a DSQ, with no long suspensions.
Assuming Pogačar stays healthy, Grand Tour racers generally see results decline starting in their early 30s. That suggests he has a pretty big window right now for a long and successful run. But his early rise brings its own challenges.
He has to sustain his form—and his focus
Pogačar has no significant history of injury or illness. But it’s worth noting that one reason young riders today are showing such incredible results early in their careers is that they are products of focused training regimens that start in their early junior years.
Pogačar has raced since he was 9 years old; at 13, he was spotted and developed by Andrej Hauptman, who is now a director with Pogačar’s UAE-Emirates team. Junior development is as old as the sport, of course, but recently it’s become far more sophisticated, making their physiological development highly accelerated. There are juniors right now who are doing more highly structured training than WorldTour pros were 10 to 15 years ago.
Because of that early specialization, some young riders now come to the pros almost fully developed. They’re fantastic racers, but most of their gains have already been made (Ineos’ Pavel Sivakov is a good example).
By contrast, Sivakov’s teammate, Tom Pidcock, is just 21 and also races cyclocross and mountain bikes at a World Cup-winning level. Like his older colleagues Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel, he’s a phenomenally talented racer with a broad skillset who hasn’t settled into one discipline. He’s not fully developed and yet he’s already winning; his ceiling is not known.
Pogačar is in some ways a product of that early specialization. He’s focused on road racing for almost a decade (he did win the Slovenian national cyclocross title two years ago, however). For his part, Pogačar has stellar physiology, and according to his coach, Iñigo san Millán, made big gains in threshold power from 2019 to 2020. But this year, said san Millán in a VeloNews interview, his numbers are the same as last year, or even a bit lower. His gains may be plateauing, and as others progress, they may catch and exceed him.
However, we can’t breeze over the number of academic studies which have shown early specialization in sports is associated with a higher risk of overuse injury (not to mention, burnout). Then there’s the simple factor of lifetime mileage. As with other sports, we may see more young riders struggle with overuse injury and burnout, which could shorten their careers compared to historical norms.
Finally, Pogačar now has to negotiate the role of being a Tour champion. His surprise win last year came late in a delayed, frenzied season of racing. Combined with the shutdown from the pandemic, that meant he was largely shielded from media, sponsor, and public demands, not to mention significant scrutiny over his performances. That won’t be the case now. Riders handle those pressures with relative ease (Lance Armstrong, Alberto Contador) or not (Jan Ullrich), and that plays heavily into their ability to prepare for races.
If he can do all that, then he has to face his competition. There are two broad groups of riders who might be able to unseat Pogačar. The first is already-established pros, and the second are those still coming up.
He has to beat current challengers
In the first group, the primary challenger has to be Roglič. At the 2020 Tour, he was the only GC rider consistently able to climb with Pogačar, and he has the TT skills to hold his own too. As Pogačar himself noted, this year’s Tour might have been a far different affair had Roglič not gotten hurt: imagine a fit and healthy Roglič backed by van Aert, Sepp Kuss, and Jonas Vingegaard against Pog’s band of UAE irregulars.
Second on the list is likely Bernal. His recent Giro d’Italia win wasn’t nearly as dominating as Pogačar’s Tour, but it was an encouraging sign he’s recovered from his back issues. As well, he’s showing versatility (his third place at Strade Bianche, for example) and seems to be rediscovering what Ineos manager Dave Brailsford says is the “joy of racing” that he’d been missing. Bernal’s biggest weakness relative to Pogačar is time trialing. He’s good enough, but Pogačar has been great. It’s that same issue that prevents me from listing some established pros and even Grand Tour winners, such as Richard Carapaz, as likely major challengers to Pogačar. They are his equal, or close, on climbs, but he’ll get them in the TT.
A word about Wout van Aert: as cycling’s most versatile male road pro, you’re likely going to hear a lot about the chances that van Aert could challenge Pogačar. I’m a little skeptical. First is age: van Aert is a latecomer to the WorldTour and will be 27 in September. He likely has other objectives, like the Tour of Flanders, where he was barely outsprinted last year by van der Poel, or Paris-Roubaix, which he’ll race for the first time in October (it was rescheduled from April due to the pandemic). Those work at cross purposes to Grand Tour aspirations. So he has to make choices about what he wants to prioritize.
As a stage racer, van Aert has intriguing potential. He recovers well and seems to improve in the second and third week of Grand Tours. And he’s great on long, hard days, including on hilly courses, as his results at races like Amstel Gold and the World Championships show. But he’s no stranger to injury and health woes: his gruesome crash in the 2019 Tour that ended his season, or his acute appendicitis in early May.
And it will take work to become a true Tours racer. His only real weakness is long climbs, where his resume is a bit thin. His Stage 11 victory, while fantastic, came out of the early breakaway, and once the chase started in earnest he gave up three minutes on the final ascent of Ventoux. A great effort, but it won’t win you the Tour. At Tirreno-Adriatico in spring, he was solid on the Stage 4 finish on Prati di Tivo but ultimately lost his lead (to eventual winner Pogačar). He’ll need to drop several kilograms from his already-lean 78kg, 1.9-meter frame to contend on the long Alpine and Pyreneean climbs of the Tour, which will impact his ability to do well in cobbled Classics. And his team is already well-stocked with better-proved GC riders.
Can he do it? Sure, if Geraint Thomas and Brad Wiggins could, van Aert can too; he’s a more talented racer. But a podium push is a big step; racing is packed with riders who show promise with a top 20 finish at a Grand Tour, or even multiple top 10s, who never realistically contend for a win. And I don’t know how likely it is that he’ll want to make the sacrifices needed to try for a podium, as they’ll negatively impact other goals.
Pogacar has to beat new riders, too
The last group that could potentially upset a long run of domination by Pogačar is other young riders. Vingegaard, 24, is probably first on that list after his superlative Tour performance, finishing second overall. He’s well-rounded, equally as good on climbs as time trials. He’s a year older than Pogačar, but he came to the sport later and is still developing.
João Almeida hasn’t raced a Tour yet, but the Portuguese prodigy (he’ll be 23 in August) has finished fourth and sixth overall at the Giro, and might have podiumed this year had he not lost chunks of time on two stages pacing Deceuninck–Quick-Step teammate Remco Evenepoel. That won’t be an issue in the future; Almeida is likely switching teams this winter. Like Vingegaard, Almeida has the complete suite of talents for climbs and TTs. He’s also a good bike handler. Both could challenge next year.
As for Evenepoel, his story is one mostly of future potential, even hype. He’s a perfect example of the trend of junior development producing perfectly finished racers. He joined Deceuninck in 2019 at just 19 years old, and he promptly won the prestigious San Sebastian Klasikoa and was second in the World Time Trial Championship that year. In 2020, he won every stage race he entered before a horrible crash at the one-day Lombardia broke his pelvis. His first race back, perhaps inadvisably, was this year’s Giro, where he entered as a favorite despite being a Grand Tour rookie. After a promising start, he faded, partly because he struggled mightily with bike handling and crashes. He’s only 21, but for all the promise he’s shown, there have been recent setbacks and it’s still unknown how he will respond.
Other intriguing prospects include Ineos’ Pidcock and a pair of riders on DSM: 18-year-old German Marco Brenner and 21-year-old Ilan van Wilder (who was rumored to be leaving the team even though he’s under contract next year). Then there’s Cian Uijtedebroeks, an 18-year-old Belgian who like Evenepoel and Brenner will skip U-23 racing and go straight to the WorldTour next year with Bora-Hansgrohe. Will they become elite stage racers? No one knows for sure. It will be at least two years before any of them could develop enough to challenge Pogačar, however.
Which raises the biggest point: there’s no telling where Pogačar’s biggest challenge lies. Maybe he struggles with injuries or focus: the old question of what you do when you’ve conquered the cycling world at 23? Maybe Roglič figures out a way to close the deal in the Tour (not to mention stay upright). Maybe it’s Vingegaard’s development or van Aert’s transformation that’s Pogačar’s undoing. Or it’s a young rider we know and have our eye on. Or it’s one we don’t.
In 2019, Pogačar, then a first-year WorldTour pro, made his debut at that January’s Tour Down Under and had a solid, promising start: 13th overall. In 2019 and 2020, he started started seven more stage races before the 2020 Tour and won two, never finishing lower than sixth. This kid could win the Tour someday, maybe even next year, people said. He entered the 2020 edition as an outside threat, and even after winning two stages and climbing to second overall, someday wasn’t thought to be that day, especially not with the rock-solid Roglič firmly in control. Then came that unforgettable Stage 20 time trial, Pogačar’s third stage win, and the Tour had a new champion.
Wherever Pogačar’s challenge comes from, we may not see it until it’s already here.
