UAE teammate believes Tadej Pogacar can reach Mark Cavendish's Tour de France record: "He simply has one more gear than everyone else"

Tadej Pogacar rode a superb season and this included his triumph at the Tour de France, that came along with six stage wins. Nils Politt, a key man in this mission to win the yellow jersey, believes the World Champion can reach Mark Cavendish's 35 stage wins record if he continues to have the same form.

The team has ridden around Benidorm for around two weeks recently, and actually also took the KOM up the Coll de Rates: "We rode up the mountains at a very rapid pace, and we thought that it might be a bit too fast for this early training time. But then Tadej said 'come on, guys, you can go faster'. All we could say was 'no, you can't'. It's as if he simply had a completely different gear ratio in his legs," Politt shared with Der Spiegel.

He was a superstar in Spain, and Politt - who trained a lot with the Slovenian - acknowledges that they actually had to 'protect' him from swarms of fans at times. "Definitely. It happens that the people we pass recognize him and call out to him, or we overtake amateur athletes who then want to take a selfie with Tadej. We protect him when things get too bad and in such cases we say 'okay, we're moving on now, goodbye'. Otherwise it gets out of hand".

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Pogacar is simply a rider of a whole other caliber, and this was possible to see at the team's press conference on the 10th where there were dozens of journalists and microphones in the room. The German powerhouse, himself a podium finisher at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Tour of Flanders and fourth at Paris-Roubaix this spring, describes the period where he first heard of his future teammate.

"I first noticed Tadej in 2018 at the Tour of Slovenia. He was still 18 and rode for the small team Ljubljana Gusto Xaurum. I saw him flying up the mountains, he wasn't even fully trained yet. I thought: Wow, who is that now?" In 2024 Politt was signed from BORA, and fit in like a glove to the new team structure, scoring big results himself whilst being the right-hand man on flat days for Pogacar on several important races in the season.

"When I look at his legs, I always ask myself: How can there be so much power in them? There are other cyclists who have powerfully defined calves, they are awesome. Tadej's calves are not like that. They look completely normal," he tells. "But he is mentally exceptionally strong and a fighter. He can also deal with setbacks well. In the 2023 Tour, he lost five and a half minutes to his Danish competitor Jonas Vingegaard on the 17th stage on the way to Courchevel. Three days later, Tadej won another mountain stage in the Vosges. He is fighting back after defeats. He lost the Tour, but he hadn't given up".

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In Politt's mind, there simply isn't any rider who is better than Pogacar at being a professional cyclist, put into simple terms: "No, I don't think there is. He is also an outstanding downhill rider. Tadej is simply a natural wonder with special cycling genes. I am always amazed by him myself [...] It's hard to describe, but he simply has one more gear than everyone else".

This year he had the power to do it, and seized the opportunity to win as much as he could, including the Grand Tours where he won 12 stages in total. "Cycling is a give and take. Vingegaard recently won the Tour twice, he was superior and in some situations didn't let Tadej get ahead. But I do believe that Tadej wanted to show that he is really dominant this year."

Pogacar already has 17 stage wins at the Tour in his palmarès, almost half of those that Mark Cavendish has achieved. Politt believes that this could realistically be a goal later in his career: "If he has a few more years like this one, then it could happen pretty quickly."

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