Tadej Pogacar my favorite human.

What the difference between Pogy and Clint Eastwood? Clint's acting.

Ok, I'm a total dork. The Tour is my fav sporting event. This guy is a stone cold killer, with a great disposition.

The Tour de France Is Terrified of Tadej Pogacar

After one of the most dominant performances in the history of the race, the 27-year-old from Slovenia has joined the likes of Eddy Merckx as one of only five men to win the Tour five times.

By Joshua Robinson, WSJ

Updated July 26, 2026

PARIS—This time last summer, Tadej Pogacar was overcome by ennui.

The greatest bike racer of his generation had spent the third week of the 2025 Tour de France looking glum, vaguely sick, and openly talking about his desire for one thing and one thing alone: getting to Paris and being done with this lap around the country.

Twelve months later, the 27-year-old king of his sport couldn’t be acting more differently. As he rolled onto the Champs-Élysées in the yellow jersey to claim his record-equalling fifth Tour de France on Sunday, Pogacar was in full pomp. He dominated this race from start to finish. He racked up five stage wins and still gifted one to a young teammate.

And, more than ever before, he proved that his hold on the peloton was so suffocating that no one even dared attack him anymore.

“The gap is so big,” said Charly Wegelius, a sports director for the EF Education-EasyPost team. “What are you going to do?”

Over the course of the past three weeks, the number of true attempts to leave Pogacar in the dust of the high mountains could be counted on one hand—particularly once his chief rival, Jonas Vingegaard, crashed out of the race in Week 2.

Paul Seixas, France’s great 19-year-old hope, was happy enough to hang with Pogacar and earn a commendable fourth place in his Tour debut. Isaac del Toro, of Mexico, came third after acting as Pogacar’s main lieutenant. And Remco Evenepoel, the Olympic champion from Belgium, produced one of the Grand Tours of his life to take second.

The only way he might have contended for first, he said, was “if Pogacar doesn’t start the race.”

Pogacar, who won by a colossal 6 minutes and 26 seconds, now owns an entire era of the world’s most famous bike race. Yes, there were two in the middle of his run that went to Vingegaard, in 2022 and 2023, but it’s become clear that Vingegaard is no longer in the same class. Pogacar stands alone in modern cycling—and in rare company in more than a century of the sport’s history.

“You are insane,” Seixas told him on the Alpe d’Huez.

Pogacar has joined an elite club of riders who have won five Tour de France titles.

Since the Tour began in 1903, only four other men have racked up five titles: Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault, Miguel Indurain, and Eddy Merckx. (Though Lance Armstrong rattled off seven victories in a row from 1999 to 2005, he was stripped of them for doping and his name remains struck through in the Tour’s official record book.)

Now, Pogacar is in prime position to overtake all of them. He is two years younger than Merckx, the man known as “The Cannibal,” was at the time he took his fifth. He is also just nine career stage wins from equalling the record of 35 set by Mark Cavendish. On Saturday, the French sports daily L’Equipe dubbed Pogacar “The Ogre.”

But if Pogacar showed one new trait this summer, it wasn’t his appetite. It was his generosity—as long as you happen to ride for the same team. On Saturday, 24 hours after storming to victory on the Alpe d’Huez, Pogacar held such a comfortable advantage that he transformed from team leader into domestique for a day. His objective on the hardest day of this Tour wasn’t to win the stage but to help del Toro secure his spot on the podium and the white jersey as the race’s best young rider.

“I think the cycling world doesn’t realize how important the team is and how hard it is for the team that is riding for the yellow jersey—and also the white jersey,” Pogacar said on Saturday. “The last three weeks, they had to work their asses off every day for this goal.”

Pogacar, left, with UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammate Isaac Del Toro after crossing the finish line in stage 20.

Such gaudy control of the race has naturally raised suspicions around Pogacar. Those only grew louder on the second rest day of the race when he was woken up at 5 a.m. by anti-doping authorities knocking on his door outside of the normal testing window. Pogacar, who has always denied any wrongdoing, said he welcomed the test.

And if the early wakeup affected him, he didn’t show it. By the end of the week, Pogacar was flying through the Alps like he owned the place. At times, all he had to do to dissuade a would-be challenger was shoot them a menacing glance. The Ogre may weigh barely 140 pounds, but once he’s on two wheels, few sights in sports are more intimidating.

“I think he’s super cool,” Wegelius said. “But sports-wise, he’s definitely an alpha. He puts people where [they belong], just to remind them.”