Tadej Pogacar spent 2025 doing exactly what he did in 2024:
destroying the competition. A fourth Tours de France title, three Monuments in
a single season, back-to-back world titles, and a maiden European crown: the
Slovenian superstar is moving closer and closer to GOAT status. He didn’t just
win, he bent very different races (white roads, bergs, Alpine giants, Kigali’s
walls, Lombardy’s rollers) to the same conclusion. Only Mathieu van der Poel,
and Remco Evenepoel on a time trial bike, were able to get the best of him at
any point this year.
But, of his incredible season, what were his five best wins?
Let’s take a closer look.
Il Lombardia – five in a row
On the Passo di Ganda, 37km from Bergamo, Pogacar did what
only he seems able to do: stand the race on its head and ride home alone. The
win made him the first rider ever to take Lombardia five straight, delivered
his 10th Monument, and capped a year in which he also stood on the podium at
all five Monuments, numbers that pull his name closer to Merckx and Coppi
rather than his own generation.
Remco Evenepoel and Michael Storer couldn’t dent the gap;
the rainbow jersey simply kept floating away. It was his third Monument of 2025
after Flanders and Liège, a record-tilting haul that underlines his range as a
rider as well as his legendary ability. GOAT talk isn’t hype when you’re
re-writing records in real time.
Tour de France - Hautacam
Hautacam in 2025 wasn’t just a stage win; it was payback for
2022. Back then, Visma cracked him here with Vingegaard and Van Aert. This time
he lit the fuse with 12.5km to climb and turned the Pyrenean amphitheatre into
a solo time trial, dropping Jonas Vingegaard immediately and everyone else with
a clarity that numbers can’t fully explain, only the pictures do. It was his
first Hautacam victory, his eighth Pyrenean stage, and the 20th Tour stage of
his career.
3 years earlier, he had suffered in the heat and under the
might of Jumbo-Visma, but he kept the receipt and delivered one of his most
devastating performances this time around. For a four-time Tour champion, the
best stage is the one that neutralises a history lesson, and Hautacam did
exactly that. If the yardstick is all-time greatness, answering a scar on the
very climb where it was inflicted is heavy evidence. The yellow jersey looked
inevitable, Hautacam made it feel definitive in just the second week of the
Tour.
Tour of Flanders - dropping the Big Three on the Kwaremont
The Kwaremont has decided careers; in April it decided a
debate. When Pogacar surged there, he snapped the elastic to Mathieu van der
Poel, Wout van Aert and Mads Pedersen, then soloed the final 15km to a second
Ronde title.
Just over a week earlier, Van der Poel had denied Pogacar at
Milano-Sanremo. But this time, Pogacar gained his revenge. Pedersen beat Van
der Poel for second, Van Aert rolled in fourth, the podium order emphasising
just how hard he’d hit them. Flanders is supposed to be their turf, their
angles, their muscle memory. He turned it into a climb race on cobbles and
forced everyone to solve a problem they couldn’t.
Winning Lombardia is of course no surprise, but even now he
has won in Flanders twice, it still doesn’t add up. How can a GC man drop the
big men on the cobbles? It wasn’t just that he won; it was who he dropped,
where he did it, and how cleanly the move landed. That’s the sign of a legend.
World Championships – Back to Back
Just like in Zurich last year, Kigali demanded a ruler’s
long move and got one. Pogacar became the first man since Sagan to retain the
road world title, and he did it on Rwanda’s savage ramps with the kind of
long-range effort that leaves no argument, just daylight. Remco Evenepoel took
silver, Ben Healy bronze, but the rainbow returned to the same shoulders it
wore over the previous 12 months.
It matters that it came late in the season, after a spring
of Monuments and a summer wrapped in yellow, Pogacar showed he is the best all
year round. Two straight world titles across two different courses harden the
GOAT case because they’re single-day, national-team tests where control is
impossible and chaos is standard.
Strade Bianche
Cast your mind back to the first big race of 2025. The
unofficial modern monument saw Pogacar tried and tested in a different way than
usual, but he still demolished his rivals. Even a heavy fall on the sterrato
couldn’t keep him from a third Strade crown. Battered and chasing, he
recalibrated the race, bridged, and then forced the selection again before
dropping Tom Pidcock and marching up Via Santa Caterina to Piazza del Campo
like the script had never changed.
Strade looks tailor-made for him, but great riders are
judged on the days when the plan blows up. The win was an early prologue to
what turned out to be another dominant season for Pogacar, and a desperate one
for most of his rivals.
Whether it was on the cobbles, gravel, or tarmac, Pogacar
was king in 2025. But which of the above moments was your favourite?
Read also
Fin MajorCycling Journalist
Fin Major is a UK-based writer at CyclingUpToDate and has been part of the team since 2024. He is the site’s main writer for FAQs and evergreen explainers and has written around 2,000 pieces for the platform. Alongside this work, he focuses on in-depth analysis and covers the biggest races on the calendar, including the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia, and La Vuelta a España, providing clear context around performance trends, tactics, and key storylines.
In his reporting, Fin uses reputable data sources such as ProCyclingStats for results, statistics, and historical context. He places strong emphasis on careful sourcing, editorial accuracy, and updating articles promptly when new, verified information becomes available. Outside of writing, Fin is an active cyclist, which supports his practical understanding of the sport and its demands.
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