Tadej Pogačar equals one of cycling’s most prestigious feats with world championship win

By Issy Ronald, CNN

(CNN) — Tadej Pogačar completed his dominant, record-equaling year on Sunday as he won the men’s road race at the world championships, becoming the first male cyclist for 37 years to win the rainbow jersey, Tour de France and Giro d’Italia all in the same year.

By completing cycling’s “Triple Crown” – as this trio of victories is known – Pogačar joins an exclusive club comprised of just Eddy Merckx, Stephen Roche and Annemiek van Vleuten.

While van Vleuten achieved this feat in 2022, a male cyclist hasn’t won all three races in the same year since Roche in 1987 – a time when the sport looked markedly different to now.

In the years since, it has become rarer for cyclists to target winning multiple races in the same season; no male cyclist had won even just the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia in the same year since 1998 until Pogačar did so this year.

This season has confirmed the Slovenian’s status as a generational talent since, unusually for a cyclist, he can win races of almost any length and on different terrains. That includes one-day races like the world championships, which require an explosiveness normally sacrificed by Tour de France contenders in favor of the endurance needed to win a three-week stage race.

“After many years fighting for the Tour de France and other races I never had the world championship as a clear goal, but this year everything went smoothly already,” Pogačar said afterward. “After the perfect season it was a really big goal to win the world championship and I can’t believe it happened.”

And the 26-year-old has underlined his complete dominance with the way in which he has won all these races. On Sunday in Switzerland, he attacked with just over 100 kilometers to go, chased down the early breakaway, and rode away from France’s Pavel Sivakov – who had initially been the only rider able to match him – to complete the last 50 kilometers of the race solo.

Attacking so early wasn’t planned, Pogačar added after the finish. “We had plans to keep the race under control but the race went quite early and I don’t know what I was thinking but I went with the flow and luckily I made it,” he said

Eventually, Pogačar finished 34 seconds ahead of Australia’s Ben O’Connor, who took the silver medal, and the Netherlands’ Mathieu van der Poel, the defending champion who rounded out the podium and led in the chasing group.

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