ANALYSIS: How do Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard’s season openers compare, and how long until they face off in 2025?
Cycling
The 2025 cycling season is now well and truly underway, as Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard began their seasons last week. Over the past three years, these two athletes have dominated headlines, and their rivalry is rapidly becoming one of the greatest chapters in the story of cycling.
As both riders embark on their 2025 campaigns, let’s give a quick recap of the rivalry so far, how they’re both looking in 2025 so far, and when they will meet for the first time since last year’s Tour.
Rivalry recap
Tadej Pogacar, the Slovenian superstar, seemed poised for unchallenged supremacy after his consecutive Tour de France victories in 2020 and 2021.
However, the emergence of Danish cyclist Jonas Vingegaard introduced an unexpected but welcome challenger. In 2022, Vingegaard dethroned Pogacar at the Tour de France, a feat he replicated in 2023, and after that 2023 win it looked the like the power was very much with the Dane and Visma.
But, the dynamic shifted once more in 2024 when Pogacar
achieved perhaps cycling’s greatest-ever season with the Triple Crown,
clinching victories at the Giro d'Italia, Tour de France, and the World
Championships. He won 12 grand tour stages last year, as well as 2
monuments!
So, in terms of yellow jerseys won, the score is now 3-2 to
Pogacar.
But that doesn’t tell the full story. In 2023, Pogacar was
not at full strength at the Tour after a crash in the spring. The roles were
then reversed in 2024, and Vingegaard had a horrible preparation for
the Tour.
Will 2025 be the first time since 2022 we see both men at
full strength again?
Tadej Pogacar’s first week of 2025
Pogacar began his 2025 season at the UAE Tour last week, a
race he has previously dominated and his team’s home race.
Demonstrating impeccable form, he secured his third overall
victory in this event and picked up exactly where he left off in 2024. The
race's defining moment occurred on the Jebel Hafeet ascent during Stage 7,
where Pogacar launched a decisive attack, leaving his competitors in his wake.
This performance not only secured the stage win but also secured his position as the general classification leader. Earlier in the tour, the Slovenian had already shown his climbing strength on Stage 3 at Jebel Jais, executing a well-timed surge in the final meters to claim victory. Beyond his stage wins, Pogacar had time for some fun on Stage 5, where he joined an unexpected breakaway on a flat stage.
So, not only was Pogacar in winning form in the UAE last week, he was so comfortable that he even had time to mess around in the breakaway!
Jonas Vingegaard's first week of 2025
Jonas Vingegaard also began his season last week, with the Dane getting thing underway at the Volta ao Algarve. It has to be said that Vingegaard’s season opener was slightly less comfy than Pogacar’s, but more impressive in different ways too.
During Stage 2's ascent of Alto da Foia, Vingegaard finished sixth, a result that left him reflecting on missed opportunities and had some fans questioning his form. Undeterred, Vingegaard delivered a masterclass in time-trailing on the final day to silence his doubters quickly. Covering the 19.6 km course in 28 minutes and 25 seconds, he not only clinched the stage victory but also snatched the GC win on the final day.
Vingegaard’s win at the Volta ao Algarve also sparked murmurs of a change in his set up, including the adoption of 150mm crank arms and a strange new saddle. Are these the keys to defeating Pogacar?
What comes next?
The next phases of the calendars of Pogacar and Vingegaard highlight their distinct differences in their strategic approaches. Pogacar's calendar is filled with one-day classics, as he aims to add victory after victory to his cycling CV.
His upcoming races include Strade Bianche, Milano-Sanremo (the race he is most desperate to win), and the E3 Saxo Classic and the Tour of Flanders, followed by appearances in the Ardennes classics such as Amstel Gold Race and Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
In contrast, Vingegaard's focus remains solely on stage races, with his eyes set on the Tour de France. His preparatory races include Paris-Nice, Volta a Catalunya, and the Critérium du Dauphiné, so cycling fans will have to wait some more time to see the Dane target a classic.
Their might be some good news for Vingegaard fans however. Remember, the last time Pogacar had such an intense classics season was in 2023, and that was the last time Vingegaard came out on top…
How to their openers shape up to previous years?
Analyzing their previous season debuts will give us an insight into whether they have similar form to previous years. Pogacar is well known for his strong stars; in 2024, he launched his season with a remarkable 80 km solo victory at Strade Bianche that ultimately foreshadowed his season of ridiculous solo victories.
The preceding years saw him clinch titles at the UAE Tour (2022) and the Clásica Jaén Paraíso Interior (2023). Remarkably, one must look back all the way to 2019, when he finished 13th at the Tour Down Under, to find a season where he didn't secure an opening race victory.
Vingegaard has also had strong season openers. His 2023 and 2024 seasons commenced with dominant performances at O Gran Camiño, where he secured multiple stage wins and the overall title. However, 2022 presented a modest start, with a 33rd place finish at the Classic de l'Ardèche.
When will they first face off?
Fans eagerly await the first direct confrontation between these two titans in 2025, as we have not seen them compete since the final stage time trial at the Tour last July.
Current schedules indicate that their inaugural face-off will occur at the Critérium du Dauphiné in June, a critical prep race for the Tour de France. But who will be in better shape by then?
So, it’s still a long few months ahead before battle commences between the sport’s best two GC riders. For now, we’ll have to make do with watching the duo sharpen their tools and prepare for battle as all roads points towards France.
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- i’m such a sucker for those group-hug, happy ending moments between competitors, largely because it’s so WASN’T that way in my younger, stronger days. (on that note, i have this hope that somewhere down the road, maybe fifteen or twenty years, a middle aged wout and mathieu will go for a pleasure ride together in flanders, and reminisce about the days when they were the young, strong monsters that stalked the cobbles.)OCexile05-04-2025
- Just like Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Ronde van Vlaanderen was/is NOT on MAX. Get your facts straight.Ben04-04-2025
- You might bounce more for the same power, but not the same speed. Sending 20 kgs over a jump at 20 kph will fly just as far as 10 kgs at the same speed. Again, Galileo demonstrated this.acem8204-04-2025
- So, you're saying that doing a bunch of small hops on a bike is easier if you're heavier? Why do people buy lighter bikes, then? Why do they generally feel better and faster? An appeal to "rhythm" is not helpful either, as the right "rhythm" might be on the lighter or heavier side of things, and as it varies, it's likely a wash either way. Then we are left with the physics truth that it takes less power to lift lighter things than heavier things.acem8204-04-2025
- No, weight doesn't affect the ability to go into the wind at all. It's all CdA vs power at that point. For example, it's "obvious" that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter one. But, absent wind resistance, it's not true (Galileo demonstrated this). An appeal to "obviousness" doesn't matter when the physics is clear. And yes, you have to be able to hold everything else constant, or you can't determine anything! So, imagine a 300 watt rider at 80 kgs with a CdA of 2.0, then imagine that same rider at 70 kgs with a CdA of 2.0. (Assume ideal tire pressure for both, same bike.) Which one can ride over a bumpy road fastest? The lighter one, as he doesn't have to lift as much. That's also why when they test bikes on 5 star cobbled sectors, the MTB goes faster than even a cobble-build road bike. Even though rolling resistance is higher on a flat road, and the CdA is junk, it smooths out the cobbles, allowing the person to not lift as much as they otherwise would.acem8204-04-2025
- I disagree. If you have lower weight, you will bounce more at the same speed, meaning that you will spend more time in the air and shorter time on the ground, as a consequence, when you are on the ground you have to produce more force for the same speedvappaxbipmv04-04-2025
- That’s not quite true, even steep climbs and sudden gradient changes can be considered as remaining tangential to the wheel whereas the occasional dip between cobbles a wheel drops into cannot, as such riding over cobbles can become like a permanent surmounting of small obstacles that hit back into your wheel slowing you drastically if you don’t have the right rhythm to “fly” on the mounds, here again the greater the momentum the less these obstacles reduce your speed. But, it is but one factor, you cannot decide on this alone. Like with natural surface ripple formation on desert tracks used by vehicles, there is an optimal speed range to efficiently pass over such surfaces, too fast or slow and your car gets shaken to pieces from the “harmonics” in the vibrations caused. Pretty sure the same applies to riding on cobbles.Mistermaumau04-04-2025
- I am saying I have an open mind at the moment for your cobbles theory but cannot agree with your wind statement (and by extrapolation sprinting since that implies speeds where wind is by far the limiting factor). Had you argued all things not being equal I could have agreed with you but if we thus assume 2 objets of the same size and speed but with differing weights, it is completely obvious that the lighter one will suffer faster in the wind. Extrapolate to the extreme, drop stuff off cliffs or just remember your momentum equations to verify. Now, obviously in real life we have to assume riders of different weights won’t have the same wind hitting surface but you cannot generalise at all then as you can have very unaerodynamic light riders and very aerodynamic heavy ones because it isn’t weight that defines CdA, Teslas have an incredible CdA and are ridiculously heavy, and someone like Harry Levreyssen is a Tesla in cycling.Mistermaumau04-04-2025
- When Roglic beat Geraint Thomas on the last day's TT at the Giro, I remember just how unbelievably emotional his team was. One guy, I forget who, German rider I think, was interviewed and was nearly speechless with a really drawn out "fuuuuuuuuuck it's incredible" comment. And then something even more amazing happened. Geraint Thomas came through the ranks of the Jumbo Visma riders and congratulated them all. True, honest, sincere, sportsmanlike, and celebratory of what had been achieved. Here he was, getting second, and he meant it. And cycling these days is like that, as you say - the way Pogacar hugged Matthews in Quebec, the way Matthews congratulated Pogacar in Montreal, on and on they honor and respect each other. It's pretty great.RidesHills04-04-2025
- Not sure exactly what you are saying, but if you're implying that being heavier is helpful if you're going against the wind or sprinting, then no, it isn't. Ceteris paribus (all else held equal) being a lighter cyclist is always better, save downhill. The reason why heavier cyclists do relatively better than lighter ones on flatter courses is because they will have to have a higher power than the lighter cyclist in order to have any chance at all against them, and flatter courses mean that the lighter cyclist has nowhere to display the better power to weight ratio, meaning that significant ratio is power to CdA, which is usually an advantage to the heavier cyclist.acem8204-04-2025