“I don’t like that comparison.” Tadej Pogačar has been swatting away the Merckx talk for years, but the sport keeps drifting back to the same question: if anyone is going to get close to cycling’s ultimate yardstick, it’s the 27‑year‑old Slovenian in UAE Team Emirates white.
By the end of 2025 his palmarès already reads like a Hall of Fame career: four Tours, a Giro, two rainbow jerseys on the road, ten Monuments, and the kind of season‑spanning omnipresence that makes other superstars look oddly part‑time. And yet his CV still has a handful of glaring, very specific absences.
No Vuelta. No Milan–Sanremo. No Paris–Roubaix. No Olympic gold. No world time trial title.
These aren’t trivia‑quiz gaps; they’re the exact holes that separate “era‑defining” from “maybe the most complete road racer we’ve ever seen.” The next five years (or perhaps three, if his 2028 retirement claims are to be believed) will be shaped as much by what he chooses not to chase as by what he wins.
The palmarès of someone who, technically, still has things to do
First, a quick snapshot of where we actually are.
Grand Tours: Pogačar owns four Tours de France (2020, 2021, 2024, 2025) and a dominant Giro d’Italia (2024). He hasn’t won the Vuelta a España; his best is that slightly forgotten 3rd place in 2019, back when he was still “the kid at UAE.”
Monuments: ten and counting. Five consecutive Il Lombardia, three Liège–Bastogne–Liège, and two Tours of Flanders. In 2025 he pulled off the kind of year you usually only see in sepia photos: three Monument wins and podiums in all five for the first time in history.
World and continental titles: back‑to‑back world road race champion (2024, 2025) and European champion in 2025. In the time trial he’s very good but not yet the best: 4th at the 2025 Worlds in Kigali, one second off the podium and well behind Remco Evenepoel.
Layer on the one‑week races, white jerseys, points jerseys and assorted smaller classics and you have something beyond “complete.” That’s why the remaining blanks stand out so starkly.
The missing races, one by one
Vuelta a España: the Grand Tour he doesn’t need – until he does
A Vuelta win would complete the career Grand Tour set. On paper, it’s the most straightforward box to tick: three weeks, mountains, at least one decisive time trial. There is nothing about the Vuelta’s terrain that Pogačar can’t handle.
The issue isn’t physiology, but rather arithmetic.
UAE management have been blunt: trying to bolt a Vuelta‑for‑GC onto a Tour or Giro–Tour campaign is “too much stress” if the priority is long‑term health and Tour dominance. Pogačar himself has said the race “doesn’t obsess” him. The modern sport is unforgiving; the Merckx‑style three‑Grand‑Tours‑a‑year fantasy looks romantic from a sofa and brutal from a training‑load spreadsheet.
Realistically, a Vuelta win probably happens – if it happens – in a slightly later phase of his career, when the team is willing to sacrifice a Tour peak for the symbolism of a Grand Tour sweep.
Milan–Sanremo: the most Pogačar‑unfriendly Monument
Of all the races he hasn’t won, Milan–Sanremo might be the most frustrating precisely because he’s already been so close. Third in 2024 and 2025, always in the right place over the Poggio, never quite able to make the selection violent enough to drop the fastest sprinters and still win from the reduced group.
Sanremo is structurally awkward for him. It’s long, but not that hard; tactical, but often conservative. The Poggio climb is too short to be a pure watts‑per‑kilo contest. There's not much hope of sticking a race-deciding attack when riders like Philipsen, Matthews or Van der Poel can survive and still kick.
Can he win it? Absolutely. One windier edition, one moment when the favourites hesitate, one super‑committed UAE lead‑out over the Poggio and he goes clear with two others instead of six. But it’s the Monument where randomness and sprint match‑ups matter most. That makes it both attainable and inherently low‑percentage, even for the best rider in the world.
Paris–Roubaix: adding kilos to chase cobblestones
Roubaix looks, on first principles, like the opposite of a Pogačar race: flat, brutal, power‑biased, where weight and momentum over cobbles count as much as climbing gravity‑defiance.
And then he rode it.
Second on debut in 2025, after a mechanical and a botched corner cost him precious seconds, told us two things. One: his bike handling and raw power are easily good enough to survive the hardest sectors in the front group. Two: he was competitive without having remodelled his body for it.
Pogačar has joked he might need “to gain some kilos” for full Roubaix optimisation. That’s only half a joke. The physics of Arenberg and Carrefour de l’Arbre reward a slightly heavier, more muscular version of him – a version that is marginally less optimal for high‑altitude summit finishes and pure climbing‑TTs.
If he truly targets Roubaix, expect a cobble‑specific spring: more northern racing, perhaps a tiny shift in body composition, and less emphasis on being razor‑sharp for early‑season stage races. It’s one of the most realistic big missing wins – but it comes with real trade‑offs.
Olympic gold: a question of timing more than talent
Pogačar has already stood on an Olympic podium: bronze in the attritional Tokyo road race. The problem since has been scheduling, not suitability. After doing the Giro–Tour double in 2024 he simply didn’t have the legs or the head for Paris.
Olympic road races are won as much on who arrives fresh as on who is strongest on paper. On a climbing‑friendly course, with a WorldTour‑calibre team around him, he is almost guaranteed to be in the winning move. Gold is then a question of numbers, cooperation and whether the Slovenian jersey scares people into forcing him to do more than his share.
Olympic TT gold is a tougher ask. On flat or rolling courses he remains a notch behind Evenepoel‑type specialists. A hilly Olympic TT could change the equation; a flat one would require months of very specific preparation that might dent his Grand Tour edge. Again, this comes down to what he and UAE are willing to deprioritise. Given his decision to not attend at all in 2024 - arguably a reaction to the Slovenian snub of his partner Urška Žigart - it doesn't seem that any Olympic medal would justify major season changes.
World time trial champion: the hardest single box to tick?
The 2025 Worlds in Kigali encapsulated the issue. Pogačar, with interrupted TT‑specific prep, was still good enough for 4th. Evenepoel, in full specialist mode, stormed past him late on the course.
Could Pogačar win a rainbow jersey against the clock? Over the right profile – lumpy, maybe a climb in the second half – absolutely. But world TT titles are increasingly the domain of riders who build whole seasons around the position, the pacing, the aerodynamics. To join them, he would need a dedicated block aimed squarely at a 45‑ to 60‑minute maximal effort.
That’s not impossible; it just competes directly with his bread‑and‑butter: Tour GC, punchy Monuments, the back‑to‑back explosive efforts that define his racing style. Among all the remaining targets, a flat‑ish Worlds TT title is arguably the one that conflicts most with the rest of his programme.
Human limits: physiology, periodisation and the calendar squeeze
The temptation with Pogačar is to assume he has no ceiling. The numbers encourage that illusion: estimated >6.7 W/kg for 40 minutes deep into a stage race, a VO2max in the high‑90s mL/kg/min, repeatability that physiologist Tim Podlogar called “completely unimaginable.”
But even outliers face the basic trade‑offs the rest of the peloton do. Extra upper‑body strength and a couple of kilos help over cobbles; they don’t help at 2000 metres on a Tour queen stage. Long TT position work is great for flat Worlds; less great for the repeated stochastic efforts you need at Sanremo or in a Tour queen stage attack.
Layer the calendar on top and the picture sharpens. UAE’s 2026 “in principle” plan – Tour as absolute centrepiece, Worlds as the late‑summer peak, and a spring re‑tuned to give him a clean shot at Sanremo and Roubaix – already stretches him across three distinct physiologic demands. Add a Vuelta GC or full TT project and something breaks: either his body, or his win rate.
For all the Merckx nostalgia, modern load monitoring, recovery science and sponsor expectations all point in the same direction: pick fewer massive goals, hit them harder.
So what should he chase – and what will matter in the end?
Strip away the noise and five targets emerge, but they’re not equal in legacy terms.
For the “greatest ever” debate, three stand above the rest:
- Vuelta a España GC – completes the Grand Tour set and gives his palmarès an elegant symmetry.
- Milan–Sanremo – turns him into a five‑Monument winner, a club that currently consists of the absolute Classics hall of fame.
- Paris–Roubaix – adds the purest cobbled classic to an already absurd Monument spread.
Olympic gold and a TT rainbow would be gilding rather than foundation stones. They’d strengthen the “most complete road racer of the 21st century” argument more than they’d move the Merckx‑versus‑Pogačar scoreboard.
The most plausible five‑year arc, given everything UAE have signalled, looks something like this: a Tour‑centric programme with one or two fully committed cobbled/Primavera campaigns, and a Vuelta targeted once Tour dominance naturally softens. Somewhere in that window, one of Sanremo or Roubaix falls his way. If both do, and a Vuelta joins them, we’re no longer arguing about whether his palmarès is comparable to Merckx’s – we’re arguing about eras, race density and the meaning of 525 career wins.
In other words: the statistical part of the conversation would be finished. What would remain is taste.
For now, the intrigue is in the gaps. The next half‑decade of men’s road racing will, inevitably, be about who can live with Tadej Pogačar on the days he chooses to be at 100%. But for the engaged fan, the more interesting question is which days he chooses – Sanremo or Roubaix? Tour and Worlds, or Tour and Vuelta? TT rainbows or cobbled stones?
He doesn’t like the Merckx comparison. But the races he circles on the calendar from here will decide whether the rest of us ever stop making it.
