“He basically already has the Tour de France in the bag” - Chris Froome sees little stopping Tadej Pogacar from fifth yellow jersey
Cycling
Chris Froome spent the 2010s as the Tour de France rider everyone else had to solve. Four yellow jerseys, seven Grand Tour victories and the Team Sky machine made him the defining force of his era. The fifth Tour, though, never came.
Pogacar starts the 2026 Tour in Barcelona chasing the same mark. A fifth yellow jersey would put him alongside Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain among the race’s official five-time winners. Froome, who won the Tour in 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017 before finishing third behind Geraint Thomas in 2018, sees very little mystery around the favourite.
“Tadej is much younger than I was back then,” Froome told AFP. “He has had an incredible season, and it is hard to imagine what could stop him.”
“If he stays injury-free, he basically already has the Tour de France in the bag,” added Froome.
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Four Tours, not five
Froome’s own fifth-title attempt came in 2018, after he had already added the Giro d’Italia to his Tour and Vuelta a Espana wins. He arrived in France with the chance to join the most exclusive club in Tour history, but Thomas became Team Sky’s strongest rider and Froome ended the race third.
A year later, his crash at the Criterium du Dauphine ended any realistic chance of returning to Tour-winning level. Froome’s later seasons never brought him back into the yellow jersey fight, leaving him permanently one short of the number Pogacar is now trying to reach.
Pogacar reaches that threshold from a very different position. The UAE Team Emirates – XRG leader is still in his prime and has built a 2026 season that already includes victories at Strade Bianche, Milano-Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, the Tour de Romandie and the Tour de Suisse. His only major defeat came at Paris-Roubaix, where Wout van Aert took the win and Pogacar finished second.
Froome’s dominance was built around Grand Tour control, altitude camps, climbing depth and time-trial strength. Pogacar’s has stretched across Monuments, stage races, one-day attacks and the same July terrain where he can now move beyond Froome’s four yellow jerseys.
Froome was the dominant Grand Tour force of the 2010s
“Everything can change in a flash”
Froome did not want to predict whether Pogacar could eventually become the Tour’s first official six-time winner. In 2018, Froome looked like the rider closest to five. By the summer of 2019, his Tour-winning years were effectively over.
“In this sport, everything can change in a flash, and I learned that the hard way,” said Froome. “In theory, he could continue for another five years. But will he have the will, the motivation? I do not know. He has to think day by day.”
Jonas Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel, Paul Seixas and the rest of the GC field still stand between Pogacar and Paris. Froome’s verdict from Barcelona was blunt: stay upright, and Pogacar already has one hand on the fifth Tour title Froome never managed to win.
Kieran WoodDeputy Editor-in-Chief
Kieran Wood is a sports journalist based in Wales and has been active in journalism since 2022. He regularly contributes to DartsNews.com and CyclingUpToDate.com, where he covers professional cycling and darts. In cycling, his work includes liveblogs from major races, including the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia, and La Vuelta a España, alongside race reports and analysis. He has also conducted interviews with professional riders.
His reporting spans the full racing calendar, from one-day classics to stage races, with a focus on accurate, real-time coverage and clear contextual analysis. For statistics, results, and historical context, he regularly uses resources such as ProCyclingStats. To support reporting on rider activity and training context where relevant, he also references Strava.
In his work, Kieran places strong emphasis on careful sourcing, editorial accuracy, and updating articles as new, verified information becomes available.
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- Welcome to the off-season.
santiagobenites02-11-2026 - guillaume martin is wuite a surprise as a gc rider.Ketterechts02-11-2026
- Who cares what Bruyneel thinks. He and his best mate Lance, the biggest fraud in the history of sport, have no place commenting on anything but how to lie and cheat!whit2pet02-11-2026
- Eeesh!Lozza02-11-2026
- bravo! a rider likes jonas needs motivation and he needs to believe in being able to reach goals. he - like anybody else in the world - doesn't believe that he can win the tdf with pogi present. and what's it worth for when pogi is not there? second class victory only. he has checked all three grand tours, so what is left if not retire? the classics! go for it, jonas!Ketterechts02-11-2026
- i am sure that under the pretext of medical examination a lot worse has happened when they were under.abstractengineer02-11-2026
- dude, Lemond never even was in the same race as Armstrong. He throws all these aspersions on other American riders who might usurp his throne as the greatest ever American racer. He doesn't say a single thing about (foreign) dopers who he actually raced against. Biggest douchebag move ever. I used to revere that guy, now I despise him. His actions are so weird.fatsupermodel02-11-2026
- This is just stupid, You do what you are good at not what you are weak at. He has no results to speak of when he participated. Even Froome, Conatdor had very little. With Pogi there he wont win none of the classics. he is already 30+ with a few years left at the top. It takes years to get good at classics. Is that really worth the effort???abstractengineer02-11-2026
- Sure, little fella.awp02-11-2026
- You'll be the ongoing joke of 2027 with anything you post here!frieders302-11-2026
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