Jesus Christ, He Actually Did It, Part II

The best rider in the world delivers on his audacious promise

Photo Credit: Pauline Ballet, ASO

I first registered Tadej Pogačar as a person worth remembering in May 2019. I was watching the queen stage of the Tour of California at Saugatuck Brewery in Kalamazoo, Michigan, while I was pretending to pay attention to what the other people at my table were saying. The Tour of California was unique among World Tour races in that I could watch it from a bar in the afternoon instead of on my computer when I’d rather be asleep. And it was the last major GC goal for Tejay van Garderen, the rider who defined my early years as a cycling fan.

In 2013 van Garderen, then one of the sport’s brightest up-and-coming GC riders, won the Tour of California, but by the late 2010s a dark age for American cycling was well underway. In 2018, van Garderen had time trialed his way into the leader’s jersey¹ heading into the last stage, but got outclimbed by an unknown Team Sky ingenue named Egan Bernal and finished second.

The following year, van Garderen once again hit the climb to Mount Baldy—the toughest in the race—in yellow. And this time, he got absolutely smoked, shipping a minute and a half and tumbling all the way to ninth. I was torn, watching this unfold, between frustration at being disappointed by my longtime fave once again, and trying not to draw attention to myself by bursting out laughing at the name “Felix Grosschartner.²”

But also, who the hell was this child with an unusual name who beat the brakes off everyone?

We would know later that summer, when Pogačar took third place on GC and won three stages at the Vuelta. In 2020, he finished in the top five in every stage race he entered, including, well, you know.

And for the past five seasons, it’s been one paradigm-shifting bombshell after another. A crushing Tour de France title defense, two Monument wins and an Olympic bronze medal in 2021. In 2022, he proved that he wasn’t just the better version of the riders we already had, but an unusually versatile champion, by remaining in contention against the best cobblers in the world at Tour of Flanders. In 2023, he won it outright, becoming the first man to win a grand tour and a cobbled monument in his career in more than 30 years.

So it’s not all that surprising that once Pogačar set out to win the Giro-Tour double, which hadn’t been done since 1998, and even then was abetted by the total obliteration of the pre-race favorites in a doping scandal. Pogačar was at least among the favorites in every race he entered, no matter the format. Occasionally, he’d get tripped up by a specialist—Jonas Vingegaard, Mathieu van der Poel, Ganna—in an extremely demanding and specific discipline. Occasionally, he’d spread himself too thin and tire in the third week of the Tour or on a final cobbled climb in a long one-day race. But at his peak, he was always unbeatable.

This year, Pogačar cut out all the filler in his schedule. The Olympics, where he would’ve had at least a puncher’s chance against Remco Evenepoel, and where victory would confer the opportunity for an unprecedented season instead of a merely historic one? Didn’t make the cut.

Nobody races like this. Everyone has throat-clearing events to ride into shape for the Monuments and Grand Tours. Pogačar has raced 55 days in 2024; 45 of those were occupied by grand tours, monuments, and the world championships—the biggest races on the calendar. He entered nine races, including three stage races, and won 23 times, counting stages and GC but not secondary classifications.

It’s as close to a perfect season as you’ll find. And it’s not surprising, necessarily, that he did it. The world championship parcours suited him down to the ground. At one-day races with repetitive climbing, like Liège–Bastogne–Liège and Strade Bianche, he’s shown an extra gear nobody else in the peloton has. The Giro field was a little weak, and his biggest rivals at the Tour—Vingegaard, Evenepoel and Primož Roglič—were both recently recovered from the Talladega Incident at Tour of the Basque Country. Vingegaard, the only rider who’s really taken it to Pogačar in the big mountains in the past four seasons, didn’t have Sepp Kuss with him. Pogačar was the favorite in all three of the races he’d called his shot on.

The surprising thing is how easy it looked. He won the Giro by the biggest margin since the 1960s. He rope-a-doped through the first two weeks of the Tour and then won the last three stages in a row. And at worlds, after months of people joking about how he was going to say “fuck it” and launch with 100 kilometers to go…that’s exactly what happened.

Shout out Quinn Simmons making the token effort to chase.

I guess we’ve got to pretend that the race isn’t over when Pogačar dials up Da Bomb in NFL Blitz. Especially when he’s got a satellite rider to pace him part of the way.³

But that’s the reality for now. Until Remco takes another leap, or van der Poel or Wout van Aert steps in front of a shrink ray, or the next big thing comes along. The myth is making the man to some extent. Pogačar never gets caught on these long-range attacks in part because, when he goes deep, everyone behind him starts racing for second. That won’t last forever. Even if there’s not a new rider fit to catch him in the pipeline, someone is going to figure out a tactical antidote before too long.

Until then, he can win every grand tour he wants to. He can win three of the five monuments whenever he wants to, plus Strade Bianche. He can approach a sport that’s mostly about honor and style, where the course is so long and the field so big that victory under any circumstances takes a minor miracle, like a good basketball player. He can expect to win.