The top of Alto de Foia, the highest climb in the Algarve, Portugal, was rainy and misty on February 21, 2019. That day, it would be home to the finish of the second stage of the Volta ao Algarve, and among the riders competing in the race would be a 20-year-old Tadej Pogačar, fresh-faced and wide-eyed in his first year as a professional bike rider. At approximately quarter past six in the evening, the Slovenian rider would outsprint Wout Poels and Enric Mas at the summit of the 8km ascent after a testing day in the hills, and a star would be born. Pogačar would punch the skies for the first time as a professional cyclist for a career that would go on to incite shock and awe in the sporting world. He wouldn’t have known it back then, but that celebration was the first of at least one hundred more. It was simply the opening few paragraphs written in the glittering story of a bike rider who will never be forgotten.
Eighteen of Pogačar's 100 wins – a number he reached after his victory in stage four of the 2025 Tour de France – have been in stages of La Grande Boucle and amassed in the space of just five years, each one taken with quintessential style and panache. Whether you like it or not, we are living in the era of Tadej Pogačar.
This is a bike rider so good, so in control, that he could choose, to the details of his outfit, when and how he was going to take his centennial win. Pogačar said after his victory on stage four that he’d asked his teammate, Tim Wellens, to take the mountain points for him the day before in order to lose the polka dot jersey, ensuring he could win in rainbows on Tuesday. Pogačar can play the Tour de France, one of the toughest sporting events on the planet, like a video game.
Despite the iron grip he seems to have on the peloton, though, it rarely feels boring to watch Pogačar. Video games, by nature, are entertainment – he doesn’t always win in the way we expect. Pogačar levels up with skill, analyses his play and surprises his other competitors. If his first strategy fails, he goes again and again until he breaks the elastic and finds what forces the cracks to form. This is how you win 100 races.
It was always clear that the fourth day of the 2025 Tour de France was, on paper, perfectly-suited to the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider (though, at this point, what parcours aren’t?) The narrow roads and punchy climbs were akin to an Ardennes-style classic – Pogačar has won Liège-Bastogne-Liège three times and Flèche Wallonne twice, naturally – but the manner in which he would take victory was unclear. We’ve seen a more reserved Pogačar in this Tour so far, seemingly reserving energy behind a newly-aggressive Visma-Lease a Bike squad. His team has been telling the media that the aim is simply to get through this first week unscathed without conceding any time. We never should have bought the bluff.
When the road kicked up on the final climb of the day on the approach to Rouen, Pogačar smelled his bait and moved. It was the same series of detonating pedal strokes we’ve seen from him many times before – in the saddle, body solid, mouth set into a thin grimace. Behind, Jonas Vingegaard was almost distanced from the world champion’s wheel until he wasn’t, clawing his way back over the summit of the climb. Pogačar had not dropped him; he would not go solo to win the stage, and it did not work, but this is a man who stops at nothing to win. There is always a second game plan.
If Pogačar can’t drop them on his favoured terrain, he can still try to beat them by sprinting against riders with tired legs. This is the 26-year-old’s failsafe: he does not feel fatigue like others. As the finish line came into view after 174km of rolling roads through Northern France on Tuesday, Pogačar settled into his drops, looked from left to right and sprinted with everything he had. When he reached the finish, almost a bike length ahead of yellow jersey wearer Mathieu van der Poel, he punched the skies with both hands in a way he had done so many times before. Victory celebrations are verging on muscle memory for Tadej Pogačar.
“I remember my first professional victory was at the Vuelta Algarve and it was incredible for me, something I will never forget. Today, 100 victories later, and it still feels as good to cross the finish line first,” the UAE rider grinned in his post-race press conference. “This Tour has started really aggressive and explosive, just like pure classic Tour de France stages. Today was like a Classics race, a lot of adrenaline in the final, riders attacking and a big field of competitors.”
So that was number 100, and number 101 is likely just on the horizon – Pogačar does not slow down. This Tour de France is only in its infancy, and the UAE rider has not even had a go at the mountains that come later in the race. The exciting, perhaps even somewhat scary, question is how far Pogačar will be able to go? In the six years since that stage win at the Volta ao Algarve, he’s managed to win 100 times, and he still is only in his mid-20s. Does he have any limits? If so, where do they lie? Unlike in a video game, we don’t know the number of levels in the career of Tadej Pogačar. He’s writing new rules. Cycling has never had a better player.
