Tadej Pogacar moves above Mathieu van der Poel to 3rd all-time in list of Monument winners with Liege-Bastogne-Liege 2025 triumph
Cycling
Tadej Pogacar more than lived up to the pre-race hype at Liege-Bastogne-Liege 2025. Everyone had predicted the Slovenian to attack on La Redoute, but despite this expectation, once Pogacar made his move there was no stopping him and for his rivals at least, no seeing him again until the finish.
A notable fact following this victory for Pogacar is that with this win, he has now taken victory at 9 Monuments in his illustrious career. Only the great Eddy Merckx, and fellow Belgian icon Roger De Vlaeminck can lay claim to more Monument victories.
After wins at Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Il Lombardia back in 2021, Pogacar also triumphed in Italy in 2022 and 2023, with a Tour of Flanders win thrown in 2023 to boot. In 2024, Liege-Bastogne-Liege again belonged to the Slovenian as did Il Lombardia for a 4th time.
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It's this year though - 2025, that has really seen Pogacar step it up to another level as a Classics rider. Riding all four of the Monuments so far this year, the UAE Team Emirates - XRG leader again took home 3rd from Milano-Sanremo, this time behind Mathieu van der Poel and Filippo Ganna, before gaining revenge at the Tour of Flanders with a fabulous performance. Then, on debut at Paris-Roubaix, only a late crash separated Pogacar and Van der Poel with the Slovenian forced to settle for 2nd place in the velodrome. And finally, just this Sunday afternoon in the Ardennes, Pogacar has soloed to a dominant Liege-Bastogne-Liege win, putting the cherry on top of his Spring Classics performances in 2025.
With his tally ticking over to 9 Monuments, Pogacar can also now boast to being a more successful Classics rider than Mathieu van der Poel!
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List of most Monument wins in cycling history
Eddy Merckx: 19
Roger De Vlaeminck: 11
Mathieu van der Poel*, Rik van Looy: 8
* Active riders who could still add more
Tadej Pogacar dedicates his Liege-Bastogne-Liege victory to the mother of his partner, Urska Zigart, on the anniversary of her death ❤️ pic.twitter.com/oKig0jZoWA
— Cycling on TNT Sports (@cyclingontnt) April 27, 2025
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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- You can clearly see the the posture change from slightly sitting to again out of the saddle while changing of gears in the video of the sprintabstractengineer08-11-2026
- He has already beaten Pogi twice in the TDF. the achievement is over. He cannot beat Pogi now and he only has a few years left at the top. Win Giro and compete in the TDF, maximise palmares.abstractengineer08-11-2026
- Just looked again at the photo. Yeah I stand by that. If MS had fallen over in Brands direction I don’t even think she would have hit her. You must be a UCI race commissioner. I’ll be sure to check my sock height should I ever see you on a ride. Looks like everyone else on here sees what I see.mij08-11-2026
- I said looking at the photo it doesn’t appear she deviated. Chill out, not stating my word is the final judgement. Just commenting that based on the photo I don’t see it. And BTW the Dutch coach even said she didn’t impede her.mij08-11-2026
- Blah Blah Blah !frieders308-11-2026
- MS said she was changing gears so that caused her slight deviation. Nothing was intentional.frieders308-11-2026
- How can you use a photo post incident to judge the incident itself (which is not hard to find if you’re prepared to invest the same amount of time in searching as writing that comment? It’s harsh but technically right even though this or worse is not always sanctioned in every race. The two things that went against MS (who unfortunately for her would still have won without making her mistake) are that it was not a bunch sprint where there could have been an overlooked incident or mitigating circumstances explaining a deviation. Everything was focused on just those 2, Schreiber was riding beautifully balanced which made her sudden deviation look unnatural stroke as if it could have been in some part intentional whilst she was slowly drifting ever closer towards the barrier to a point that would have reached obstruction level. In her defence, it might have been the realisation she was heading towards that that made her react suddenly and caused the deviation involuntarily. In any case, congratulations to her for the ride of her life, in people’s minds she will be credited for it.Jumpyjohn07-11-2026
- Good boy Obviously doesn’t need that much help dealing with pressure, as some have suggested. Wiser (and humbler) than many far further along their careers. About offering him the moon, recently someone came up with an explanation of the downfall of a football great (either referring to Maradona or Portuguese Ronaldo) saying it was kind of normal after coming back from the moon, except that others, including some who actually did go to the moon like Armstrong (Neil in case anyone is too switched off to realise) didn’t go through any of the same motions after coming back. A lot of how you deal with situations has less to do with the situation than with your character.Jumpyjohn07-11-2026
- I think that they're not really used to dealing with this type of incident in a cyclocross race, and the situation has been magnified because it was a race for a championship title. It's very unfortunate that the race had to be decided in this way.
santiagobenites07-11-2026 - Seriously why do they keep doing stupid things like this. Its one thing to relegate when the placings are minor, when the action is blatant. But when it is ambiguous, why dont they at least take advice from some higher up to avoid embarrassing themselves. This is similar to the Halland goal when his teammate was clearly offside and interfered in play and VAR gave them the goal. if you dont have evidence you cannot convict. Even for doping they have these rulesabstractengineer07-11-2026
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