How do you beat Tadej Pogačar? It's a conundrum Andy McGrath had a crack at answering in a recent Rouleur magazine. A jovial take on what has become cycling's multi-million-dollar question. But, as they say, words are cheap. We journalists can pontificate about tactics, teamwork, or sheer ability; it's for the other riders to actually do it and at the biggest stage of all: the Tour de France, starting on Saturday in Barcelona.
There's only a handful who have bettered the four-time winner.
"To have been able to drop him is something really incredible for me," Jonas Vingegaard told an expectant press conference before the team presentations. "It is something that I am extremely proud of."
The former yellow jersey winner is a rider who thinks his way to victories. Twice he has cracked the Pogačar puzzle – in 2022 and 2023. On both occasions the Dane and his Visma team exploited weaknesses in the Slovenian's armour – long climbs, hot temperatures and fuelling complications, which have all been patched up. Going into the 2026 Tour, Pogačar is looking his imperious self, with a timely reminder of his greatness delivered in June's Tour de Suisse.
Pogačar can beat Vingegaard without ever dropping him, thanks to his time-trialling and the bonus seconds he picks up in bunch sprints. Vingegaard doesn't have that luxury – to beat Pogačar, he'll have to drop him. It's a rarefied feat these days, one Vingegaard himself hasn't achieved since the halcyon days of 2023. Since that Tour, Pogačar has moved onto another level, inspired by Vingegaard's dominance.
"The competition between me and Jonas for the last few years was spectacular," Pogačar said ahead of their next showdown. "I think it will continue for a few more years, I hope. We will see. I think we push each other to new heights every year. So we will see how far we go this year."
Pogačar was eager to point out that the Tour is more than just him and Vingegaard on the startline.
"I do not think that he is the only one who can come close. I think there are quite a few guys here who can aim for the victory."
Did he really mean it? Again, words are cheap. The pair have finished first and second every year for five years running. And the third place finisher has never been that close. Could that change this year?
No one has arrived at a Grand Départ with quite the weight of expectation currently sitting on Paul Seixas. The 19-year-old Frenchman is making the most hotly-anticipated Grand Tour debut cycling has perhaps ever seen. The hype has been validated: this season alone he has won Itzulia Basque Country and La Flèche Wallonne, and finished on the podium at Strade Bianche and Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
Seixas has never pretended this is about gaining experience.
"The priority is the general classification, to be able to make the difference there and see how it goes. What position that means, I do not know yet, I cannot tell you. But I would not take any risk for anything other than the general classification," he said before his Grande Boucle debut.
That ambition survived a scare in June, when he crashed heavily and abandoned the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, prompting an MRI scan to rule out lasting damage. He has since returned to training at altitude, and arrives in Barcelona insisting the setback hasn't changed his goals.
The question is not whether Seixas has the ability. It's whether a body still in its teens can absorb three weeks of racing without cracking, physically or mentally, under the biggest spotlight French cycling has produced in a generation. If he can, the four-decade wait for a home winner suddenly looks less theoretical.
He's not the only youngster with a case, though. Isaac del Toro arrives as Pogačar's key lieutenant, but that undersells him: the Mexican has won the UAE Tour, Tirreno-Adriatico and the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes this year, and looks the most complete rider outside the top two.
And then there's the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe conundrum of Remco Evenepoel and Florian Lipowitz. At this point – the morning of stage one – the possibilities seem endless. Could we be heading back to the days of genuine competition between multiple riders and jeopardy going into the latter part of the Tour? But, then again, perhaps we are getting ahead of ourselves. Most likely, Pogačar will remain peerless.
Journalists (on the whole) are impartial – we just want a good race to write about. While we're at kilometre zero with zero seconds on the clock, that's what I'm doing. So: a three-horse race, a two-horse race, or something stranger – a teenager, a domestique and two more riders all elbowing for the space around Pogačar and Vingegaard? It's up to them to decide the order.
