Tadej Pogačar

Pogačar grew up in Klanec, in the Komenda municipality north of Ljubljana, and came to cycling at nine through the Rog Ljubljana club, following his older brother Tilen. Football came first. He rode his under-23 years with Ljubljana Gusto Xaurum and won the 2018 Tour de l'Avenir, the first Slovenian to do so. UAE Team Emirates signed him that August, before he had turned twenty.

The 2019 Vuelta a España was his first Grand Tour: three stage wins and third overall. The following year he took the Tour de France on its penultimate day, overturning Primož Roglič in the time trial to La Planche des Belles Filles and finishing with the yellow, polka-dot and white jerseys. He won again in 2021.

Jonas Vingegaard beat him at the next two Tours. In 2022 Pogačar attacked through the first fortnight and then lost the race in a few kilometres on the Col du Granon. In 2023 he arrived short of racing after fracturing his wrist at Liège-Bastogne-Liège in April, and cracked on the Col de la Loze. He won Il Lombardia in both of those seasons.

He won the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in the same year in 2024, the first rider to manage that since Marco Pantani in 1998, then took the world title in Zurich with a solo attack from more than 100km out. Eddy Merckx in 1974 and Stephen Roche in 1987 were the only others to have won all three in a season. UAE extended his contract to 2030 that October.

In 2025 he rode all five Monuments for the first time and reached the podium of each, winning the Tour of Flanders, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Il Lombardia, second at Paris-Roubaix on his debut and third at Milan-San Remo. He had won Lombardia in 2021 and 2024 as well. The Tour de France and the world title, taken solo again in Kigali, were part of twenty wins from around fifty race days.

He races from February through October instead of building a year around July, and he attacks early, on descents and flat roads as much as on climbs. By the end of 2025 only Eddy Merckx and Roger De Vlaeminck had won more Monuments, and Pogačar had still to win Milan-San Remo or Paris-Roubaix.