Was Tadej Pogačar's 2024 racing season the greatest in cycling history?
After adding a fourth Il Lombardia title to round-off his stellar year, Rouleur looks at how the Slovenian's 2024 racing season stacks up against cycling's best
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 World Tour-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 Paris-Nice, Tour of the Basque Country and Volta a Catalunya, but the lack of any podiums or overall wins at any of the Grand Tours renders it not quite as well-rounded. The same can be said of similarly prolific seasons of Classics specialists from previous generations, Roger De Vlaeminck (1975) and Rik Van Looy (1965).
The jaw-dropping and still record-high tally of 44 that Freddy Maertens managed in 1977 remains unsurpassed quantitatively, but, though it did include a Grand Tour overall victory at the Vuelta a España, that win list was missing any of the top tier one-day races, or a Tour de France appearance. Conversely, what Fausto Coppi’s legendary year of 1949 matches in terms of prestige (a Giro/Tour double, plus Milan-Sanremo and Il Lombardia titles), it lacks in relation to Pogačar’s quantity, 13 wins only a little over half of what the Slovenian this year managed.
There is of course one man who can rival Pogačar’s season; the man Pogačar is striving to surpass as the greatest of all time, Eddy Merckx. But even in his case, in the years between 1970 - 1973 in which he exceeded 30 wins on each occasion, there isn’t a single season that clearly stands ahead of Pogačar’s 2024; perhaps only 1972, when in addition to matching his victories at the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Il Lombardia (and a Milan-Sanremo title instead of the Worlds), the Belgian accomplished something he didn’t by also breaking the Hour Record.
Have any women had a season that can compare to Pogačar’s? As recently as 2022 Annemiek van Vleuten pulled off her own Triple Crown, and went one better by also winning the Vuelta (albeit still in its limited five-day form) and Liège–Bastogne–Liège on top of the Giro, Tour and Worlds. And of the many great season’s enjoyed by cycling’s other GOAT, Marianne Vos, 2012 can certainly challenge Pogačar’s, with a Giro Rosa overall title, World Championships and Olympic gold medal, plus three of the seven Classics from that year’s World Cup.
Yet for all this talk of stats and wins, these numbers and titles alone don’t tell the full story of what made Pogačar’s year so otherworldly. It wasn’t just the fact he was winning all of these races — it was the way he won them. Compared to the rider who’s win tally he matched, Alessandro Petacchi, who relied on his peerless sprint to win from bunch finishes, Pogačar’s victories almost invariably came from devastating attacks; in fact, all but two occasions he crossed the line solo.
And then there’s the enormous sizes of his winning margins: 2:44 at Strade Bianche, 1:39 at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and the highest yet of 3:16 at Il Lombardia. Neither could anybody get near him at any of the Grand Tours, with 6:17 and 9:56 his lead on GC at the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia, respectively. If you add the total amount of time of his winning margins from every one of his wins, it comes to a remarkable 41 minutes. On average, he won each race by 57:55, falling only just short of a minute. They might all still only count for one victory each, these weren't just wins; they were annihilations.
There are many other factors to consider too; the fact he accomplished virtually everything he set out to do, third-place at Milan-Sanremo being the sole exception; the quality of the opposition he was up against, with the likes of Remco Evenepoel, Jonas Vingegaard and Mathieu van der Poel having to be overcome; and the style with which he won races, regularly doing so via bold, long-range attacks like the 48km solo ride to win Il Lombardia, 81km at Strade Bianche, and most memorably his crazy, unplanned attack over 100km from the finish in Zurich at the Worlds.
So all things considered, maybe Tadej Pogačar’s 2024 really was the best season in the history of cycling. And he the best (male) rider of all time? It’s still too early to say that, given Eddy Merckx’s brilliance wasn’t confined to just a single season like this, but several consecutively. But, having only recently turned 26, time is on his side, and this year proves that he could yet challenge and possibly even surpass the great Belgian for that honour.
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