Now that Tadej Pogačar has hung up his cleats for the off-season and enjoys a well-earned rest, we can start to ask the question: have we just witnessed the single greatest season by a professional cyclist in the history of the sport? That might initially sound hyperbolic, and perhaps a matter of recency bias that overlooks and downplays the many great achievements of the distant and not so well remembered past. But the more you delve into the sport’s history, the greater Pogačar’s feats in 2024 become.
In terms of sheer quantity of wins, we haven’t seen the likes of this for many years. Last Saturday’s Il Lombardia triumph was his 25th of the season, the highest total any rider has managed since sprinting extraordinaire Alessandro Petacchi won the same amount in 2005. For the last time somebody exceeded that total, you have to go all the way back four decades to Sean Kelly’s 26 wins in 1984.
But it’s the quality of Pogačar wins that has made this season particularly special. He has limited his racing to top tier races, meaning his total number of victories weren’t padded out by smaller, easier races. Over half came from both the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia, while all but one of the rest came at WorldTour-level races, among them some of the most esteemed one-day Classics on the calendar.
As the year has gone on, he’s reached ever more rare landmarks. His main goal was of course the Giro/Tour double, something that had only been done previously twelve times before. Upon ticking that off, he set his sights on the World Championships, victory in which put him in the really rarefied company of just three men, alongside Eddy Merckx (1974) and Stephen Roche (1987) as those to have won cycling’s fabled Triple Crown.
Now, by winning Il Lombardia last Saturday (his second Monument victory of the season following Liège-Bastogne-Liège in spring), he has broken new ground hitherto unconquered by anyone. While Fausto Coppi (1949) and Eddy Merckx (1972 and 1973) have won two Grand Tours and two Monuments in the same season, none of them managed to top that off with a World Championships title as well. In this respect, Pogačar is the world’s first, out clear on his own with no equals.
So how does his 2024 compare with the other great seasons from the past? The aforementioned Sean Kelly’s prolific 1984 also included some major wins, notably Paris-Roubaix and Liège–Bastogne–Liège, plus overall victory at…