Cyclist Tadej Pogacar Breaks Records in Amazing 2025 Season

by Roy Brindley, 14 October 2025

Has any sportsman achieved more than cycling’s Tadej Pogacar in 2025? Here, Roy Brindley states the Slovenian’s case for BBC Sports Personality success.

What didn’t Tadej Pogacar win in 2025 would be the easiest question! © Getty Images

Key Facts:

• Slovenian cycling star did more than win a third Tour de France in 2025.
• The winner of three Monument races, Pogacar created history with two other placings.
• Additional “Pogi” success in three Classics, including La Flèche Wallonne.
• The 27-year-old phenomenon proceeded to take European and World titles.

Technically bringing down the curtain on 2025’s Road Cycling season, Tadej Pogacar landed a fifth successive Il Lombardia last weekend. With over 200 kilometres and five hours of racing in his legs, the Slovenian kicked away from his rivals 36 kilometres from home to record the 50th solo success of his career.

The victory meant the 27-year-old became the first rider in history to podium in each of the five classic one-day Monument races in the same season. It is a distinction that paints additional gloss on a season that has been extraordinary by modern standards.

Topping the UAE Team Emirates XRG rider’s list of 2025 achievements is a fourth Tour de France success. His margin of victory in the three-week tour was over four minutes. For good measure, the first of “Pogi’s” four 20205 stage victories represented his 100th professional win of his career.

Matching Merckx With the Record in Sight

Pogacar did not contest the Giro d’Italia – a Grand Tour he won in 2024 – or the Vuelta a España this year. Instead, his Tour de France was bookended with Classics, Monuments and major Stage Races.

The precocious talent won with a regularity and dominance unseen since the 60s and 70s, the halcyon days of cycling, when Eddy Merckx ruled supreme. The Belgian ace won 19 monuments during his 13-year professional career.

In taking 2025’s Il Lombardia, “Pogi”, in his sixth season as a professional, won his tenth Monument, leaving him on course to match Merckx’s record. However, the landscape has changed in 50 years, and this year Pogacar claimed a handful of races that did not exist decades ago.

Classic Success Starts in the UAE

Pogacar’s remarkable 2025 winning streak began in February at the UAE Tour. Seconds may have separated the placed finishers in this 1,000-kilometre slog, but the Slovenian had over a minute to spare Giulio Ciccone at the seventh and final stage.

He may have missed 2023’s Strade Bianche, but “Pogi” went three-from-three in the one-day Classic the following month. Once again, his margin of victory was over a minute. It was the same result and time advantage in his next assignment, the Classic Tour of Flanders.

Zero seconds was the official margin in the one-day Amstel Gold Race. However, unusually, Pogacar lost out in the three-way drive to the line, taking second in the late April one-day Classic.

Just three days later, regular service was restored as another Classic, La Flèche Wallonne, went the way of “Pogi”. The second Monument of his season and the finale of the Ardennes classics, Liege Bastogne Liege, was bagged soon after. Giulio Ciccone took second place over a minute behind in a familiar scene.

Warming up for Yellow in Dauphine

The Criterium du Dauphine, the traditional warm-up for the Tour de France, saw many of the sport’s big guns in action. Remco Evenepoel, Jonas Vingegaard et-al tried but could not get within 59 seconds of Pogacar, who won three of the race’s eight stages.

At the Tour de France, “Pogi” wore the yellow jersey on three separate occasions and for 14 of the race’s 21 days. The 3,300-kilometre trudge would have finished many riders’ seasons. “Pogi” quickly bounced back to take further titles.

World and European Glory Ahead of Olympic Champion

With high altitude to contend with, the course for the 2025 UCI Road World Championships Men’s Road Race in Rwanda was described by multiple cycling publications as “one of the most difficult in the history of the World Championships.”

Nevertheless, “Pogi” devoured the 267-kilometre course, kicking clear of his rivals 70 kilometres from home to win by an 88-second margin. It was the second time cycling’s poster boy had won this title.

The penultimate victory of Pogacar’s outstanding season came one week later at the 2025 European Road Championships in France. Remarkably, four-fifths of the field never reached the chequered flag as Pogacar broke a lot of hearts.

Amongst those was Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel, who also finished second in Rwanda and would do so again in the Il Lombardia.

Can the BBC Ignore Sports Star Pogi?

The UK’s online betting sites are yet to offer odds on the BBC Sports Personality World Sport Star of the Year award (WSSotY). It is an accolade voted on by the public. However, ballot papers only contain a list of shortlisted candidates nominated by the BBC.

That award’s destination may not be so clear cut, but with Pogacar dominating his sport in a way that only Roger Federer and Tiger Woods – elite athletes who have won WSSotY in the past – his chances appear as inevitable as one of his recent one-day races.