Author of the Tour of Italy, Tour de France and World Championship hat-trick, winner of the Liège-Bastogne-Liège classics and the Tour of Lombardy, will the Slovenian repeat the same season in 2025?
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At 26, among active riders, Tadej Pogacar already has seven Monuments to his name (4 Tour of Lombardy, 1 Tour of Flanders, 2 Liège-Bastogne-Liège), which brings him closer to the podium of the most successful riders in these great classics, two lengths from the Irishman Sean Kelly and the Italian Fausto Coppi.
Winning all five Monuments is a challenge for Pogacar. He still has to win Milan-Sanremo, where he gets closer year by year to a victory. And Paris-Roubaix, which he has never raced before.
In 2024, the Slovenian completed the Tour of Italy double-Tour de Francea feat that dates back to 1998 with the Italian Marco Pantani. He crushed the World Championship in Zurich by attacking 100 kilometers from the finish to achieve an unprecedented feat for 37 years.
25 victories to defend in 2025
If Tadej Pogacar believes it will be difficult for him to reproduce its exceptional 2024 season, the cycling world expects him to continue his outrageous dominance and solidify his candidacy for the title of greatest rider of all time.
After extending his contract with the UAE team until 2030 for an annual salary estimated at 8 million euros, he returned to training seriously at the beginning of December to prepare for his next season, where he will have an incredible record of 25 victories to defend.
Pogacar, whose domination may have aroused doubts which he brushes aside back of the handhimself believes that he can still progress. But repeating such a raid seems to him “ almost impossible “. However, he indicates in the columns of The Team : “ If an entire group is fully invested in you and victory is possible, then your duty is to go for it. I’m a player on a bike, but we’re paid to perform, not to have fun in the game. I have to win like you, you have to write your article, otherwise neither of us deserves our salary, t do you agree? »
He is predicted to have six Tours de France under his belt
For French climber Romain Bardet, Pogacar should at least dominate the next two years. “ When we see the margin he had this year over the competition… He was far from being at the limit “, he says. “ He is a dreamer who puts no limits on himself. He’s not necessarily looking to become the best of all time. Rather, he says to himself: I’ll take everything that comes and we’ll see later. But maybe he already is…», Comments for his part the Irishman Stephen Roche, last rider before Pogacar to have achieved the Giro-Tour-Mondiaux triple, in 1987. In an interview with the Italian sports daily the Gazetta dello SportFrenchman Bernard Hinault, winner of five Grandes Boucles, said he was convinced that Pogacar could become the first to win the Tour de France six times.
Apart from the Tour de France, Tadej Pogacar has not yet made his choice between the Tour of Italy and the Tour of Spain which offers, in total, five high mountain stages and six medium mountain stages on his program in 2025 A great goal for Pogacar, who was best youngster during the 2019 edition of the Vuelta.