Tadej Pogačar

Profile Overview

Tadej Pogačar (Slovene: [taˈdɛ́ːj pɔˈɡáːtʃaɾ] ; born 21 September 1998), nicknamed "Pogi", is a Slovenian professional cyclist who rides for UCI WorldTeam UAE Team Emirates XRG. His victories include five Tours de France (2020, 2021, 2024, 2025 and 2026), the 2024 Giro d'Italia, and thirteen one-day Monuments (Milan–San Remo once, Tour of Flanders three times, Liège–Bastogne–Liège four times and Giro di Lombardia five times), as well as the World Championship Road Race twice. Comfortable in time-trialing, one-day classic riding and grand-tour climbing, he has been compared to all-round cyclists such as Eddy Merckx and Bernard Hinault. Despite his youth, he is considered one of the greatest cyclists of all time.
Pogačar was successful as a junior rider, winning the 2018 Tour de l'Avenir. In 2019, he became the youngest cyclist at 20, to win a UCI World Tour race at the Tour of California. In both his 2020 debut at the Tour de France and the next year, he won three stages and the general, mountains, and young-rider classifications, becoming the only rider to win these three classifications simultaneously. 2021 also saw Pogačar's first successes in the Monument one-day races, at the Giro di Lombardia and Liège–Bastogne–Liège. Subsequent seasons saw further wins in these, with the Tour of Flanders also added in 2023. Meanwhile, in the Grand Tours, Pogačar had consecutive second-place finishes in the Tour de France to Jonas Vingegaard, with whom his rivalry is considered to be one of the greatest of all time. This run ended in 2024 when he completed the first Giro d'Italia and Tour de France double since 1998, winning 12 stages across both races, adding the World Championship to become only the third to achieve the Triple Crown of Cycling. In 2025, he became the first rider to retain both the Tour de France and the World Championship. In 2026, Pogačar became the 5th person to win the Tour de France 5 times.
Pogačar has been praised for his attacking riding style, an approach which Pogačar himself has jokingly referred to as a "stupid instinct" during a time when many others have ridden more conservatively to manage energy levels. His aim to be competitive across both the Monuments and Grand Tours has been labelled as a return to "classic" bike racing of the 1960s–1980s, and this success across multiple fronts has led to him being the UCI road racing world No.1 for a record total number of weeks and record number of consecutive weeks.