If you’re writing a biography of a rider like Tadej Pogačar, one of your biggest issues has got to be when to stop typing.
Since he appeared on the pro scene in 2019, the Slovenian has developed an appetite for winning that’s as voracious as anybody’s since the great Eddy Merckx in the ’60s and ’70s. At the time of writing, his total wins are up to 108.
Even as Andy McGrath was approaching the deadline for his latest book, Tadej Pogačar: Unstoppable, his 27-year-old subject continued to win massive races, including the UCI Road World Championships in Rwanda and the final Monument of the season, Il Lombardia.
For many other riders, such victories might be career-defining. For Pogačar, he was merely increasing his win tally at both races – a record fifth straight Lombardia and second consecutive world title.
It wasn’t just a question for McGrath of when to draw the line, either, but one of making definitive judgements on a rider who’s still very much active. “It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” he says of the project.
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The author’s previous two books were about deceased cycling champions – Tom Simpson (the Brit who tragically died on Mount Ventoux during the 1967 Tour de France) and troubled Belgian Frank Vandenbroucke, who battled drug addiction and died while on holiday in 2009.
“Writing about the yesteryears has its pros and cons, but I suppose it was a little easier to get fully close to those around those champions than it was pinning a current superstar, who’s a moving target,” McGrath says.
“For example, when it comes to the Merckx comparison, it’s like calling a cycling race when there’s still 70km to go.” That said, Unstoppable is a book that arrives at an opportune moment.
Not just because we’re in the calm of the off-season, when Pogačar is forced by dint of the calendar to take a break from winning, but because he’s almost certainly closer to the end of his career than the beginning.
Pogačar declined to be interviewed for the book, and his team, says McGrath, had “mixed feelings” about it being written now.
But they certainly didn’t stonewall the writer, and he spoke with many of the key characters who’ve shaped Pogačar’s life and career, from his parents, teachers and friends to teammates and rivals from across his working life.
“Would it be nice to have a one-hour sit-down with Pogačar?” McGarth asks rhetorically. “No one gets [that]. He doesn’t win the biggest races by giving the very little free time that he has to journalists.”
But Pogačar’s voice, from different stages of his life, runs through the book, which was important to McGrath, “to make sure you have his input and his personality, coming across in his own words, whether from past interviews we’ve done, press conference interactions or his dealings with other international media over the years”.
A head for heights
When reading, say, a biography of a rock star such as David Bowie, some 40 years after his heyday, it’s the wild stories of his time in the public eye that I want to read about.
For a book like Unstoppable, about a rider whose career we’re following closely as it happens, the early years are the most illuminating, and so it is here.
How does a one-off like Pogačar even happen? McGrath visited his hometown of Komenda, a village 20km north of Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana, and spoke to key people in his life, to piece it all together.
One of the striking things about Pogačar now, even in these remarkable years of winning, is his humour and the way he carries himself.
Perhaps you could describe it as approaching his job with the utmost seriousness while never forgetting the absurdity or good fortune of being able to race a bike for a living.
But this is nothing new for anyone who’s known him throughout his life. McGrath speaks of Pogačar as a kid who “radiated a sense of calmness, patience and joyfulness” that his family cottoned onto early.
However, the monstrous physiology and powers of recovery that professional trainers such as Iñigo San Millán have spoken of weren’t immediately apparent.
“What I found interesting is that in interviewing sports scientists who tested him when he was 16, he wasn’t anything special in Slovenia, let alone the rest of Europe,” says McGrath.
When I put it to the writer that he might have had worries of finding the friction or drama in a story like Pogačar’s, who had a seemingly wholesome childhood in Slovenia and appears extremely well-adjusted, he disagrees.
“People don’t realise the setbacks he had, the growing pains, and that the difficulties were mainly out of the public eye,” suggests McGrath.
Pogačar wasn’t a winning machine when he was a younger rider, and it’s well known that he had to wait for his body to mature before it caught up to the thoughts he had as a schoolkid daydreaming in class of a career on his bike.
However, when he showed up to his first training camp in 2018 with the UAE squad in which he’s spent his whole career, this cherubic kid with barely any definition in his chunky legs was holding his own on long climbs with seasoned professionals such as Dan Martin.
It was the ceiling that got everyone excited about Pogačar, as much as what was in front of their eyes.
In his image
Seven years later, and the now 27-year-old Pogačar is the senior rider at UAE Team Emirates-XRG – if not in age, then in rank and longevity.
Only the 36-year-old Norwegian Vegard Stake Laengen has been there longer. And the effect has rubbed off.
“They’re the world’s number one team, but they don’t act that way. What I’m hearing is they’re not disrespectful in the bunch, but also when you go to the team bus, it’s so different to how Team Sky was,” says McGrath.
“I went to [the bus] during this year’s Tour de France, the morning after Pogačar had crashed. This was the Hautacam stage, where he’d go on to definitively win the Tour.
“But no one knew how he was, how he was going to be – would it be curtains for his Tour challenge? But they were just, like, super relaxed. I could hear Journey’s [song] Don’t Stop Believin’ coming from the bus.”
If they don’t act like a top team in that sense, they’ve certainly upped their game behind the scenes.
Ex-teammates such as Dan Martin and George Bennett have gone on record in the book, saying that the setup and science know-how at the team has lagged behind other top outfits in the past.
That seems to have changed now, with 96 wins in 2025. “The team have grown with Pogačar and Pogačar’s grown with the team,” reckons McGrath. “It certainly isn’t just ‘The Pogačar Show’ – very few of those wins have been sprints.”
So, they’re a talented, committed squad – backed handsomely by the UAE, of course – but if Pogačar’s happy-go-lucky exterior has an infectious effect on his team, McGrath says we also need to remember what a ferocious competitor he is.
“We call it a kind of façade, but everyone has to have that ‘bastard’ in them, you know, to be a top pro cyclist. He does kill with kindness and charisma, but he does have that killer in him.”
Despite his dominance, particularly over the past couple of seasons, Pogačar’s personality means that, unlike other such champions, he hasn’t collected many enemies.
“I talked to people on and off the record about him, and there wasn’t any dirt,” says McGrath.
“What I found really interesting, though, was the growing sense of defeatism and the psychological aura that he now has, especially when turning up for a stage race.
“There’s almost a despair among his competitors, and [a feeling] that you need a masterplan, like Jumbo-Fisma had [at the Tour de France] in 2022, to compete.”
Even with that, a stronger UAE team and a Pogačar at his peak mean that a multi-pronged attack like that no longer comes with any guarantees.
His fellow riders warm to him, however, even when he’s put them on their knees, because of the way he goes about his business, believes McGrath. Take the final week of this year’s Tour, where a knee injury took the smile off his face.
He didn’t quite stagger over the line, but he looked like he wanted the finish to hurry up.
Even then, he lit up the final stage, on the newly designed route through Paris, to put on a show for fans and satisfy himself.
“Part of me sees what he’s done and wonders why he isn’t more unpopular. He has every right to have more haters than he does.
“But I think it’s partly the kind of charisma and partly this racer that refuses to die. Look at Paris-Roubaix this year – how can you hate a Tour de France champion risking everything to try to win this cobbled race?
“I think that’s the most impressive second place in modern cycling, because anything could have happened. Even when he doesn’t win, he’s contributed to a spectacular race,” muses McGrath.
Pogmania
The peloton is bloodied, then, but unbowed and there are riders – current champions and those coming up – who can still challenge Pogačar, whether it’s through his imperious level dropping or them rising to meet the challenge.
It was only a couple of years ago that many wondered if he could ever crack Jonas Vingegaard again at the Tour after the Dane’s two dominant wins.
“It could be Vingegaard, it could be [Remco] Evenepoel. Evenepoel’s is a really interesting transfer.
“Red Bull aren’t in pro cycling to be second best. They want to win the Tour, and they have the money, the clout and the new managerial signings to maybe change something. So, I think Remco could be the one to get closer.”
First, however, they’ll need to crack the aura that surrounds the Slovenian, which is helped by an impressive physicality these days too.
For a man who’s all of 175cm and 64.5kg at Grand Tour weight, he looks massive on a bike compared to his climbing rivals – a combination of broad shoulders and a tree trunk of a bottom half.
“You see him at races surrounded by the entourage of a champion,” says McGrath.
“He does have that Merckx aura, like you’re in the presence of [someone special]. I remember him walking into the press conference of Strade Bianche in 2024.
“It helped that we were in this medieval palace, but he exuded this charisma. You don’t get Beatlemania or Taylor Swift mania in pro cycling, but this is the closest thing I’ve seen.”
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