The 2026 Cycling Season Awards - Domestique Cycling Podcast
Pogačar won 22 races in 2026, including three Monuments and a fifth Tour de France, but crashed out of the Vuelta in August and never pinned on a number again. Evenepoel completed the full set of championship jerseys and Seixas won Il Lombardia at 20. So who was the rider of the year?
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The road season is over, so we hand out the Domestique Awards. We start with domestique of the year, where Brandon McNulty gets the nod for his work for Pogačar at Milan-Sanremo, ahead of Matteo Jorgenson and Florian Vermeersch, a few months before he became world champion himself. Then team of the year, where UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s 78 victories just edge out a Visma | Lease a Bike season that brought the Giro, Paris-Roubaix and 14 Grand Tour stages.
Enric Mas’ Vuelta beats the Giro and the Tour as our Grand Tour of the year, and Wout van Aert takes moment of the year for the second season running, this time for beating Pogačar on the Roubaix velodrome. Paul Seixas is an easy choice for breakthrough of the year after eight wins, fourth at the Tour at 19 and Il Lombardia at 20.
Then the big one. Pogačar won 22 races, three Monuments and a fifth Tour de France, then crashed out of the Vuelta in August and never raced again. Was that still enough for rider of the year, or did Remco Evenepoel or Seixas do enough to take it from him? To finish, we each pick our favourite race of the season and our biggest disappointment, with Jayco AlUla and Mathieu van der Poel both coming up.
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