Tadej Pogacar beaten once again - Cycling World Champion beaten on Laureus Award by Tennis player Carlos Alcaraz

Tadej Pogacar is cycling's most prestigious and successful athlete at this point in time and is fast approaching some of the biggest names in the sport's history over the year due to his extremely successful years since turning pro. It was thought that he could potentially finally take a win at the Laureus Awards, considered to be the most prestigious award for world-wide athletes, but he has had to settle for another defeat. The Award was attributed to Carlos Alcaraz.

In 2025, Pogacar had a year on the bike that might have even surpassed his 2024 season. Whilst he did not have the Giro d'Italia in his calendar, he made up for that with wins at the UAE Tour, Strade Bianche, Tour of Flanders, Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Tour Auverge - Rhône Alpes, Tour de France, World Championships, European Championships, Tre Valli Varesine.

It was an historical season in many senses of the word, achieving even more UCI points than in 2024 which is an accurate way of understanding the unreachable amount of success he's had. He has also done all of this wearing the rainbow jersey, and went on to defend his world title in Kigali, Rwanda. He was also the only rider to race all five monuments in the season and aside from that, he made history by being the first ever to finish on the podium of all five in one season.

He has become the symbol of the sport, elevating it higher in the international sports scene and also pushing the boundaries of a riders' value and marketability - making him also the highest paid cyclist in the world, currently with a reported salary of €8 million a year.

However that was not enough to conquer the award, in which he was matched with Tennis player Carlos Alcaraz - the eventual winner; 2024 winner and pole jumper Mondo Duplantis; MotoGP driver Marc Marquez; football player Ousmane Dembele and Tennis player Jannik Sinner.