Winning the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, Strade Bianche, Tour of Catalonia, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège in one season, Tadej Pogačar is on fire in 2024! It’s no surprise that people are starting to talk about him in the context of the cycling Goat, greatest of all time. Has he earned that title?
My opinion: No
I get it, the number of days in the leader’s jersey, the number of Grand Tour stage wins, all of the one-day classics wins, the Giro-Tour double and good chances at a historic triple if he does Vuelta. He is incredibly versatile and consistent when it comes to winning races. But for me, he doesn’t represent the pinnacle of cycling. And I would argue that currently, he is not on a trajectory to get there. Let me explain.
Tadej is a generational talent
Let’s get one thing straight. Tadej is a generational talent. Only a handful can rival him in single race, and nobody comes close when it comes to results over the whole season. His versatility is not from this era. You have to go back to 1981 to see a Tour de France winner, Bernard Hinault, win one of the monuments, Paris–Roubaix, in the same year. Sure, Eddy Merckx did it four in his career, but both of these legends were competing half a century ago.
So, if you’re looking at it from the perspective of wins and stats, Tadej Pogačar is certainly on his way to being called the Goat if he keeps racing like this for years to come.
What makes a Goat?
There’s nothing wrong with counting the number of wins. Personally, I look at the “greatest of all time” moniker differently. To me, it’s about mastering all aspects of road racing.
To be the Goat in my eyes, you have to be great at climbing, time-trialing, sprinting, descending, recovery, fueling, mental resiliency, racing tactics, executing team strategy, and all of the other aspects of road racing that make the sport so complex and fascinating.
Of course, the pure sprinters will always beat the GC guys. What I mean is that you have to be dominant in all of these aspects among your closest competitors, and arguably among the legends that came before you.
In my eyes, Tadej has mastered many of these, but still struggles with some.
Fueling and race tactics problems
These struggles were highlighted when Tadej Pogačar lost the Tour to Jonas Vingegaard in 2022 and 2023. In stage 11 of the 2022 Tour, Tadej was pulling on Col du Galibier with Jonas on his wheel and Wout van Aert ahead in a breakaway. Tadej spent a lot of energy pulling with minimal hope of gaining time because Wout could wait for Jonas and help him catch up if he got dropped. Plus, Marc Soler confirmed in an interview that Tadej didn’t eat well enough during the stage. As a result, Tadej bonked later on Col de Granon and lost 2:51 to Jonas.
On stage 17 in 2023, it was a similar scenario when Tadej got dropped on Col de la Loze and lost 5:45 to Jonas. The famous “I’m gone. I’m dead.” quote from the team radio
illustrated how wrong it went.
Bad tactics even cost Tadej a stage 11 win in the 2024 Tour. He attacked too early and also possibly didn’t fuel properly, which allowed Jonas to catch back up to him and even outsprint him at the finish line.
Stage 9 with 13 gravel segments is another example. Tadej attacked with about 90 km to go and while Remco Evenepoel did him a favor by pulling the peloton to bring him back, it would have been smarter for Jonas and Remco to let Tadej go alone, tire his legs out, and then use the three highly motivated GC teams (Visma Lease-a-bike, Soudal Quick-Step, BORA – Hansgrohe) to chase him down later. Chris Horner, a former Grand Tour winner and cycling analyst, explains the stage tactics in more detail in this video.
Tadej’s mistakes rarely get exposed
Tadej didn’t have a major blow up in 2024 like in 2022 and 2023, but I would argue that it may be because he was not pushed to the limit by Jonas and his team as in previous years. When you have a talent like Tadej, it takes the best at their best to take advantage of his mistakes. In the final stage interview Tadej said, “I was really enjoying from day one till today.” Tadej simply wasn’t fully tested this year.
Executing the team strategy
Tadej is a wild card on his team. He races spontaneously, it’s in his nature. The problem is that this impacts his teammates and the team strategy. For example, in stage 19, interviewers asked Adam Yates about the attack on the last climb where he kept looking back. He said, “I was going to pace like normal and then he (Tadej) told me to attack. I was like, what?” After being asked whether the goal was for Tadej to bridge back to him or to cause others to chase Adam, he said, “Yeah, with Tadej I’ve got no idea.”
And it’s not an exception. Tadej often surprises his teammates by making improvised changes on the spot. Nils Pollit expressed similar sentiment about racing with Tadej. The interview is in German, but when translated you can hear him saying, “With Pogačar on the team, it’s hard to follow any tactics.” He then continued to give a few examples, like this one.
“He even wanted to sprint on a sprint stage with a 5% uphill finish. I told him, why waste your energy? You don’t need to sprint. But then, 4-5 kilometers before the finish, you see him moving through the field, getting ready to sprint.”
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