As Tadej Pogačar‘s seemingly unstoppable run of success extended to a fourth Tour de France triumph in six years on Sunday, you might have thought the Slovenian would be looking at what will be next on his hitlist.
As the UAE Team Emirates-XRG leader told reporters after stepping up on the winner’s podium for the last time in this year’s Tour, he’s currently not planning too much in terms of racing.
“Anything is possible,” Pogačar said, with studied vagueness. And, after his spectacular attempt to secure a fifth stage win in this year’s Tour on the final day of the race, that sense that Pogačar can and will go for any win within his grasp is definitely the case for the 26-year-old.
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Indeed, this was probably the first time such a serious attempt to do so by a yellow jersey wearer has been made on the Champs Elysées circuit since Bernard Hinault in 1979. But as Pogačar put it after coming home fourth behind Wout Van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) on the stage, but – far more importantly – first overall in the race, “Right now, I’m not thinking about any other race, I just want to go to the team bus and enjoy this moment.”
“I don’t want to think about other races. We can talk about the Giro [for 2026] or the Vuelta some other time in the future.”
In some ways, this non-committal approach to the future is only logical. Given Pogačar’s level of success in the Tour de France and elsewhere, from the World Championships to the Tour of Flanders to the Criterium du Dauphiné to Strade Bianche, there’s an increasing sense that the UAE Team Emirates leader is now engaged in a struggle not with current rivals in any present or future races.
Rather- and it’s a mark of the level of his achievements to date, with the 100th win of his career one of many milestones in this year’s Tour – Pogačar has reached a point where his main point of reference is really compared to the very greatest in the sport, and perhaps, now, only Eddy Merckx, the greatest of them all.
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After all, victory number four also places Pogačar on a level with Chris Froome in terms of wins, and it’s also just one short of the all-time record held by Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain. In terms of the Tour alone, this is an achievement of jaw-dropping proportions, particularly given he is only 26, younger than when Indurain won his first.
But if there is little doubt that he will be up there fighting for a fifth in twelve months’ time, and the possibility of making the record his own with a sixth is seeming increasingly likely, Pogačar was in no mood on Sunday evening to start discussing his plans in that area – or anywhere else.
“No, it’s not a [specific] goal to win five Tours, right now, I have no clear goals,” he insisted.
“Maybe I’ll go for the Worlds this year, and Lombardy. But I don’t have any other clear goals. I just want to enjoy these moments, and then I’ll think about the rest quite soon.”
A new level of control in 2025
He was more explicit looking back at his latest achievement, telling reporters immediately after crossing the finish line that he could hardly find the words to express how delighted he was with what he had achieved.
“Winning four Tours, six years in a row on the Tour podium – I’m just speechless,” he said. “This one feels especially amazing. I’m very proud I can wear the yellow jersey here today.”
Yet for all he was able to joke on the winner’s podium on the Champs Elysées that he has been here before, and maybe will be again, Pogačar’s Tour this year definitely had a different feel to the previous three victories and five previous podium appearances..
Pogačar’s first win in 2020, taken on the last day possible in the Planche des Belles Filles, was perhaps the most dramatic, while 2021 confirmed him as the new dominator of the Tour. As for 2024, it saw Pogačar attain a new level of physical power following his 2022 and 2023 defeats, as he swept up six stages en route to his third victory. 2025, on the other hand, was arguably the Tour where he moved onto a new level in terms of controlling his rivals and measuring out his efforts to ensure he stayed in power.
“It all started with how we began to ride the race with the team, it was a great atmosphere and there was great team spirit,” Pogačar said.
“Then after stage 5 in the time trial and the Mur de Bretagne, I knew I had good enough legs to compete for victory. The second week was the most decisive moment, where I took the greatest advantage. Then I went into the third week feeling more comfortable.”
Pogačar’s more calculating style was also noticeable in the way he lost and then regained the jersey. Into the lead for the first time on stage 5 after finishing as runner-up to Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) in the time trial in Caen, he then deliberately gave it away to Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) the following day.
Having then moved back into the top spot again after winning on Mur de Bretagne on stage 7, a similar process followed with Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost) on the challenging day through the Massif Central three days later. The definitive lead only fell his way on stage 12 at Hautacam, and from there on, Pogačar remained firmly in control of the race all the way to Paris.
Asked if he had raced more defensively once he moved into the final third of the Tour and had taken four wins in nine days, there was an overwhelming sensation that he might go on snapping up the stages. However, by that point, Pogačar had little or nothing to prove by taking any risks, and he opted for a more conservative approach.
“Obviously, I was in the lead, I had quite a big gap” – 4:24 in Paris on Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) – “So I was feeling comfortable in yellow.
“I was a bit tired in the last week, to be honest but for now, I don’t want to speak about what went wrong, I just want to enjoy this moment.”
To judge by the final stage, though, Pogačar was more than happy to go back to his usual ultra-aggressive self when the stakes were no longer as high. The world champion cheerfully ripped the peloton to shreds on the first ascent of the Montmartre, cut the front group down from 27 to six the second time round and only as accomplished a Classics rider as Van Aert could stop him from getting a fifth win on the third and final ascent of the Paris climb.
“Today I enjoyed the nature of the race,” Pogačar said about being let off the leash to go for a win on the Champs Elysées. “The GC times were taken, everybody was fighting it all out, but it was pure racing.”
“I had it mind that it was the end of the Tour, so it was a bit easier to leave it out on the road, because I know tomorrow I can rest. So today was a good day for racing for me.”
Pushed by rival Vingegaard
Tour de France 2025 overall podium: second place Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), winner Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and third place Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) (Image credit: Getty Images)
If Vingegaard was notable by his absence in the battle for a final stage on Montmartre, Pogačar insisted that his rival was an ideal opponent throughout the three weeks of the Tour and in general, because it raised him to another level, racing-wise.
“It’s incredible, we keep pushing each other to another level, we are privileged to have this competition because it makes us grow more and more,” Pogačar said. But after five years where the two of them have occupied the top two spots on the Tour podium, already a record in 2024 and now pushed out by another year this July, where the next battles will actually happen in the Grand Tours, Pogačar was not yet willing to say.
The endless heightening of expectations that Pogačar creates with his relentless success is that there is an increasing sense that anything but victory is now a failure, and he talked at some length about the risk of burnout that it can create.
“I’m at a point in my career where I could finish tomorrow, and I’d be happy,” Pogačar said, although with a contract until 2030, that is not looking likely, and in any case, he then revealed that the idea of doing so was a joke.
“Seriously, burnout does happen in sport and in cycling, where there’s so much mental and physical training, it can happen a lot. “
“Sometimes riders get a bit too obsessed with training, they do more and more and a lot of the time, you can see that from their levels of fatigue early in the season. But the team needs you to race; you keep going into this kind of circle and never recover. Then in October, you get your break, and in December it happens. So burnout happens.”
However, Pogačar’s exuberant style of racing on stage 21 of the Tour suggested strongly that given the chance, he’s more than happy to keep competing, and although he perhaps surprisingly said he was sometimes affected by self-questioning about his performance, he said having such a strong team as UAE to back him “helps clear them away.”
“For sure, when you have such strong opponents, not just Jonas [Vingegaard] but everybody, you never know what is coming. So you can always have some doubts.”
“But the team atmosphere helps you and if you go to races motivated and wanting to give it all, if you give it all on the road, you don’t have anything to regret, you don’t need to doubt. Or maybe always a little bit because – you never know.”
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