How many Tours de France can Tadej Pogačar win? The scary thing is, he's only just hitting his peak

Back in April, I had the opportunity to sit down with retired pro Allan Peiper over lunch. The Australian lives in Belgium, just a stone's throw from the iconic bergs that dot the Flemish landscape, and as we talked, we moved on to the subject of Tadej Pogačar. 

At the time, the Slovenian was just a few weeks away from his highly anticipated debut in Paris-Roubaix, and Peiper, who was one of his first sports directors and mentors when the rider turned pro back in 2019 with UAE Team Emirates-XRG, was hesitant about his former protege’s chances of winning the race, and whether it was the right moment for the world champion to turn his focus, even for a few weeks, away from the Grand Tour dominance he’d stamped over the peloton.

“It’s not for nothing that Eddy Merckx's photo is in my house,” Peiper told me.

“He won the Tour de France five times, and the other greats of the sport won the Tour five times. For me, it might not matter for Tadej now, but 20 or 30 years from now, it might. 

“Jan Ullrich, they said, was going to win the Tour six times, and he only ended up with one because someone else popped up, and I just think that the Tour should be the focus for at least a couple more years. He’s close. He’s got three already, but things can change fast." 

Peiper, though, counselled against spreading the net too wide, too soon.

“Even though Roubaix is a fun race, it’s still a dangerous race, no matter what you say. Vehicles, motorcycles and holes in the road, it’s still a dangerous race,” he added.

The Australian certainly had a point. Pogačar did crash during his Roubaix adventure, and although he finished second to the mighty Mathieu van der Poel, he failed to add to his ever-growing collection of Monuments. 

However, Pogačar’s debut over the cobbles of Roubaix demonstrated that he marches to the beat of only one man, and cares far less about traditional records than the great champions of old used to.

Daniel Benson is a Tour de France veteran, having covered 14 editions of the race as editor-in-chief of Cyclingnews and Velo, and now running his Substack newsletter. Through the 2025 Tour de France, Daniel will be writing a series of dispatches exclusively for BikeRadar, bringing you his unique insight into cycling’s greatest race and, as the Tour develops, a behind-the-scenes view that only a reporter with his contacts book can bring.

A voracious appetite for victory

Peiper and many of my generation look back at the select group of five-time Tour champions (Merckx, Hinault, Anquetil and Indurain) with a great sense of nostalgia. They were Goliaths in the sport, and five Tours guaranteed an element of immortality within the annals of cycling history.

Pogačar is not like those champions in many ways. He is, of course, most akin to Merckx, ‘The Cannibal’, who remains the most successful male rider of all time, but Pogačar is cut from different cloth and one suspects that matching the tallies of Tour wins isn’t his highest priority, nor the accolade that he believes will define his career.

As things stand, the 26-year-old is currently on his way to a fourth yellow jersey in Paris. He’s presently over four minutes clear of his nearest rival, Jonas Vingegaard, and throughout this year’s race, Pogačar has constantly had the better of his ailing ally. 

The UAE leader has notched up four stage wins already, and with 21 career stage wins already in the books, it’s growing increasingly likely that he will surpass even Mark Cavendish’s record tally of 35 wins before his career is done. This is a phenomenal prospect when you consider Pogačar has only started six Tours, isn’t a sprinter, and could well add to his tally before this year’s race is complete and reaches Paris.

In the here and now, it feels as though we’re still in the middle of the Pogačar era. In theory, he’s hitting his peak years, and with Vingegaard outclassed for a second year running and a huge gulf between that pair and the best of the rest, one can easily wonder if Pogačar could make it to eight or even nine Tour wins before his career finally ends. 

Beware the tale of history

That’s the thing about dominance, though, we never know when it will end and often it can come crashing down in the blink of an eye. 

Miguel Indurain was set for a sixth and record-setting Tour in 1996, but on the slopes of Les Arcs he cracked, effectively lost the race and retired a few months later. 

We’ll never know if Briton Chris Froome would have won another Tour after his horrific crash in 2019, but he certainly would have been a feature for the next couple of years at least. Jan Ullrich, as Peiper explained, and more recently Egan Bernal were both tipped to dominate the world’s biggest race for years to come. 

Ullrich never won another Tour, and Bernal hasn’t even troubled the podium since his win. 

We also don’t know when or where the next Tour winner will emerge. Pogačar was a highly promising and successful U23 rider, but few expected him to seal third overall and win a batch of stages in his first Grand Tour at the Vuelta a España in 2019, and even fewer expected him to usurp Primož Roglič in the final time trial of the 2020 Tour.

It does, however, feel as though Pogačar will bow out before his dominance ends. He has never struck the establishment as the sort of rider who would ride into his mid-30s and watch as his powers slowly ebb and start to decline. 

He races because he wants to, he wins because that’s what drives him, and when he decides on a goal – whether it’s the Tour, the Giro or even Paris-Roubaix – it takes centre stage in his mind and his planning. In part, that’s what makes Pogačar’s dominance less sterile or boring compared to some of the champions that came before: he races more on instinct, and less on pre-conceived notions about what he should and shouldn’t target. 

Returning to Peiper, the Australian probably won’t have long to wait for Pogačar to equal Merckx’s Tour de France record, at which point The Cannibal’s picture can sit nicely next to the Slovenian’s. 

What makes it all the more fascinating is that Pogačar will get there in his own time, and in his own way. His dominance will last a few more years yet.

Week three: Onley remains in the frame

On Tuesday, the Tour de France enters its final phase with just six stages remaining before the 2025 champion is crowned. 

It would require a major upset to dethrone Pogačar at this stage, but the battle for third place is ongoing, with Florian Lipowitz currently comfortably in the final spot on the podium, while Oscar Onley remains in contention, only 1m 25s behind. 

The young Scot is having a breakout Tour de France for Picnic PostNL and has been at the forefront of the race throughout this year's edition. The departure of Remco Evenepoel from the race, has created a fantastic opportunity for both Lipowitz and Onley. 

Can Milan hold off Pogačar for green?

In the race for the green jersey, Jonathan Milan has a slender 28-point advantage over Pogačar. The Italian should have enough opportunities via the sprint finishes into Valence (stage 17) and Paris (stage 21), plus all the intermediate sprints, to hold off the Slovenian and become Italy’s first winner of the jersey in over a decade. 

Milan has already won a stage in this year’s race, but after his team’s GC hope Mattias Skjelmose crashed out of the race, Lidl-Trek will be in a position to focus on the green jersey. 

Ineos Grenadiers finally celebrates – a swansong for Thomas?

Ineos Grenadiers rescued its Tour de France on stage 14, courtesy of Thymen Arensman's solo attack into Luchon-Superbagnères. 

The British team had endured a difficult opening fortnight in the Tour, with a lack of results, with Carlos Rodriguez failing to mount an expected GC challenge, and only Arensman able to make a lasting impression in the break. 

The team will use the final week to try and pick up another stage win, with Geraint Thomas set to end his long and distinguished Grand Tour career in Paris.