"I think the scary thing for everybody else is that it looks like he’s still improving" - Daniel Lloyd on Tadej Pogacar

Tadej Pogacar is the leader of the UCI rankings, a two-time Tour de France and Il Lombardia winner, and also a victor at Il Lombardia and now Tour of Flanders at age 24. Despite having already 56 pro wins many more are expected to come, and many fear what the Slovenian may be able to do as it is completely possible that he has not yet reached his physical peak.

“I think the scary thing for everybody else is that it looks like he’s still improving,” Daniel Lloyd said in The Breakaway show “That would be normal for a normal 24-year-old, that you’ve still got room for improvement through to 26-28, whatever your peak is. But you just thought of Pogacar given how good he was, maybe he was an early developer and he had already peaked at the age of 23. But if he is still improving, and there is still room to move that ceiling up, it’s an incredibly scary prospect for every specialist in cycling because he’s showing he can do it on every type of race.”

Initially a stage-racer and Grand Tour specialists, Pogacar showed tremendous potential right from his debut year at World Tour level, and has since gained a dominant position, winning on virtually every terrain and having no weak point. It could be argued perhaps that the cobbled classics were terrain that was out of his league as most of his peers, but not only has he proven otherwise, he's outright won the Tour of Flanders this weekend. Paris-Roubaix is the next and perhaps last big race where he may want to prove himself, but his young age allowed him to still have time to specifically focus and prepare for the 'Hell of the North'.

“A Tour de France rider, especially a GC rider who is winning, they are a lot lighter, they don’t have as much muscle mass, they don’t have to be as explosive," Adam Blythe argued. “So that short-term power on short climbs, they generally don’t have that explosivity that a Classic rider does. So for Tadej to be able to climb mountains with the best climbers in the world and have that long sustained power, but then come and do a race where you are competing against the very best in the world at that five-minute power block – and not just compete against them, but drop them, it’s almost unheard of in the past 30 years."