How the ghosts of Pogacar's Tour past and future are driving him

Four years ago, Tadej Pogačar’s dominance was already such that he could warm up for the Tour de France with a game of rock, paper, scissors. On the climb to Velika Planina, he escaped with teammate Rafal Majka and then ceded stage victory after jokingly ‘fighting’ for the honour with the Pole. 

That Tour of Slovenia was officially Pogačar’s final preparation race for the main event, but it already had the feel of a victory lap before his home fans. There was something vaguely performative about the spectacle too, as though Pogačar were eager to remind his rivals that this cycling thing was getting a touch too easy to him.

Even though Primož Roglič and Jonas Vingegaard had placed first and second at the previous week’s Dauphiné, there was still no real sense that Pogačar could be beaten in July. Challenged? Maybe. Beaten? Hardly. 

He had won the previous two Tours, after all, and he had come off a Spring campaign that included an astonishing 50km solo to win Strade Bianche and a firm swatting aside of Vingegaard at Tirreno-Adriatico.

Pogačar carried the playful spirit of that Tour of Slovenia into the opening half of the Tour de France. At times, he seemed to lean into the public perception of the carefree, almost cartoonish persona who treated the biggest race in the sport like a game.

There he was, attacking on the cobbles and then sprinting to win just for the hell of it at Longwy the following day. When Vingegaard and Roglič took turns to accelerate with venom and isolate him on the Col du Galibier, Pogačar tracked every single move without regard for the cost. 

And when the race looked to be settling down ahead of the Col du Granon, he couldn’t help making a smiling ‘full gas’ gesture to the television cameras, as though this were all just a game. 

Maybe it was bravado or simply an act of defiance. In any case, it wasn’t the truth, which would be revealed inexorably on the upper reaches of the Col du Granon. Winning the Tour is ultimately a hurt business, and Vingegaard dealt what proved to be the knockout blow 4km from the summit, by which point Pogačar’s legs were already wobbling beneath him.

It was the first major setback of Pogačar’s career and that afternoon, it seemed as though his sheen of invincibility had been permanently tarnished. The idea began to take firmer root over the rest of the Tour, when Vingegaard repelled all his attacks and then dropped him again at Hautacam. 

The point was hammered home a year later, when Vingegaard proved 2022 was no fluke by outlasting and then overwhelming Pogačar at the Tour. Pogačar’s talent was more dextrous than Vingegaard’s, as his Tour of Flanders win that spring had shown, but the Dane now seemed to have his number at the Tour.

For eleven months of the year, Pogačar was routinely included in the Greatest of All-Time conversation with Merckx, but deep down, he must have known it was growing harder to make his case when he clearly wasn’t the Greatest in July.

Pogačar, it seems, took that personally. In the winter of 2023, Javier Sola took over from Iñigo San Millán as his coach, an internal move at UAE Team Emirates that coincided with the beginning of the imperial phase of Pogačar’s career.

We may never know precisely how Pogačar’s preparation regimen was changed that winter, but we have certainly seen the startling difference those alterations made. The man who has won (almost) all before him over the past two and a half years at times looks entirely different to the kid who already raced like a potential GOAT during his previous five pro seasons.

There are faint echoes of Muhammad Ali about the whole enterprise. When Ali suffered his first career defeat to Joe Frazier in Madison Square Garden in 1971, he retooled and became, in many respects, a different boxer. The fleet-footed ‘dancer’ of the 1960s gradually gave way to a more methodical fighter. Adapting to a new era and new opponents, he regained the world title and cemented his status as the greatest over the remainder of the 1970s.

So it has been for Pogačar in the aftermath of those defeats to Vingegaard. In many respects, he has become an even more spectacular performer than he was in those early years. The attacks are from further and further out – witness those world title triumphs – and the scale of his ambition is ever greater, with Paris-Roubaix added to the mix.

But he is also a more remorseless kind of rider. The playfulness that characterised his early years, at least from the outside, has given way to a more crushingly dominant style. When Pogačar attacked from 50km to win Strade Bianche in 2022, the move seemed to be inspired at least in part by his own exuberance and by the notion that he was entertaining those watching. 

When he cruised clear from 30km further out in March, it seemed to be, above all, simply the most efficient way for him to win. By striking out alone, Pogačar was removing the variables from his afternoon. There was no game to be played here or puzzle to be solved, just another victory to be accrued. Onwards.

The vagaries of the Classics at least allow for a contest and even the occasional defeat, but it requires something increasingly remarkable for Pogačar not to win a bike race these days. He has won all bar one of the seven races he has started so far this season, with 13 wins to show from his 16 race days. 

At Milan-Sanremo, not even a crash before the Cipressa could deny him victory. At Paris-Roubaix, he suffered the kind of misfortune that would have torpedoed an ordinary mortal, and yet only an inspired Wout van Aert could deprive him of a full set of Monuments by day’s end.

The early Pogačar could occasionally punch himself out or leave an exposed chin, but the current iteration has no such chinks in his armoury. Any weaknesses have long since been ironed out.

Back in 2022, Pogačar somehow contrived to finish fourth in a two-up sprint at the Tour of Flanders, and he was routed by Vingegaard at the Tour after overextending himself in the opening ten days. His 2026 version – stronger and more tactically disciplined – is still just about notionally beatable, but it’s difficult to imagine him contributing to his own defeat in quite the same way as he did back then.

Even so, there are riders who will line up in Barcelona with ambitions of beating Pogačar to yellow in Paris, chief among them Vingegaard. 

We’ll never know how differently the story of Pogačar’s 2024 reboot would have played out if Vingegaard hadn’t suffered that horrific crash at Itzulia Basque Country that April, but his recovery to finish second at that year’s Tour was arguably his most impressive achievement. 

And after enduring a more disappointing second place in 2025, Vingegaard’s subsequent Vuelta a España victory told us plenty about his resilience. 

It seemed to regenerate Vingegaard’s confidence too, and his 2026 campaign has been seamless to this point. Victories at Paris-Nice and the Volta a Catalunya were followed by a crushing, Pogačar-esque triumph at the Giro d’Italia. 

All signs point to this being the best Vingegaard we’ve seen since his 2023 Tour win. The ghost of Pogačar’s past is potentially back to haunt him.

So too is the ghost of Pogačar’s future. 19-year-old Paul Seixas placed a plucky but distant second to Pogačar at Strade Bianche before proceeding to enjoy an astounding spring campaign. When Seixas met Pogačar again at Liège-Bastogne-Liège in April, he lasted altogether longer in the world champion’s company, matching him on the Redoute and only yielding on the final haul up the Roche-aux-Faucons. 

In France, there are hopes that Seixas might even challenge Pogačar for yellow at the first attempt this July. The trouble for Seixas and everyone else is that Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates-XRG seem to take that idea very seriously.

Unlike in 2022, there is no sense that Pogačar’s spring exploits have led to any complacency ahead of the Tour. Indeed, after Pogačar hinted at jadedness last July, UAE devised a race programme expressly to stave off boredom, with the world champion focusing entirely on one-day racing until he lined up at the Tour de Romandie in late April.

By the time Pogačar began his Tour preparation in earnest in Sierra Nevada in May, Seixas’ exponential development and Vingegaard’s restoration seemed only to have fuelled his fire for the part of the season that seems to motivate him the least. 

At least, that was the feeling after the Tour de Suisse, where Pogačar came down from the mountain and delivered a 70km solo to wrap up overall victory on the opening day. For good measure, he won the time trial and then crushed allcomers on the lone summit finish.

Although Seixas’ April displays and Vingegaard’s May exhibition have raised hopes of a real contest at the Tour, Pogačar’s June response suggests it might again be business as usual in July. 

The presence of real rivals seems only to be pushing the world champion to unseen new heights. That’s the paradox of cycling in this particular phase of the Pogačar era.