Tadej Pogačar

He is the first Slovenian winner, and, at the age of 21, the second-youngest winner after Henri Cornet, who won in 1904 at the age of 19.

He is the first road cyclist in history to break the 6,000-point barrier in UCI World Ranking.

Tadej Pogačar (born 21 September 1998) is a Slovenian professional cyclist who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam.

In 2011 he came to the attention of Road World Championship medallist Andrej Hauptman, who is as of 2021 his coach and head coach and selector for the Slovenian national cycling team.

Hauptman watched Pogačar pursuing a group of much older teenagers from 100 metres behind.

Thinking that Pogačar was struggling to keep up with the older riders, he told the race organisers that they should provide some assistance to Pogačar: the organisers explained that the younger rider was in fact about to lap the group he was chasing.

He made his debut for the team at the Tour Down Under, where he finished 13th overall.

He went on to win the Volta ao Algarve, taking the race lead after winning the second stage.

He also placed sixth at the Tour of the Basque Country.

In 2019, he became the youngest cyclist to win a UCI World Tour race with the Tour of California win at the age of 20.

Later in the year, in his debut Grand Tour, Pogačar won three stages of the Vuelta a España en route to an overall third-place finish and the young rider title.

In both his Tour de France debut and the following year, he won three stages and the race overall, as well as the mountains and young-rider classifications, becoming the only rider to win these three classifications simultaneously.

He is a three time National Time Trial champion (2019, 2020, 2023).

He is the only rider who has worn the white jersey at the Tour de France 4 times overall and a record 75 days in total.

He has won three different one-day Monuments five times (Tour of Flanders and Liège–Bastogne–Liège once and Giro di Lombardia three times), Paris-Nice once and Tirreno–Adriatico on two occasions.

In 2021, he also made history when he became the first Tour de France winner to take an Olympic medal in the road race in the same year after he took bronze at the men's road race.

He is the current men's UCI road racing world No.1.

He has been No.1 for a record total number of weeks and record number of consecutive weeks.

He finished the 2021, 2022 and 2023 seasons as world No.1.

Pogačar followed his older brother Tilen in joining the Rog Ljubljana club at the age of nine.

Hauptman subsequently managed Pogačar as an under-23 rider with the team, before joining UAE Team Emirates as a directeur sportif in May 2019, after Pogačar joined the team.

Pogačar joined from the 2019 season, a deal that was made ahead of the 2018 Tour de l'Avenir, which he won.

In May 2019, he won the Tour of California, becoming the youngest rider to win a UCI WorldTour stage race.

He took the race lead after winning the queen stage to Mount Baldy on stage 6.

In June, Pogačar won the Slovenian national time trial championship after beating Matej Mohorič by 29 seconds.

In August, Pogačar was named in the team's startlist for the Vuelta a España, his debut in a Grand Tour.

In the first week, he performed strongly, placing himself in the top ten on GC (General Classification) before winning his first Grand Tour stage on the rain-soaked stage to Cortals d'Encamp.

The win allowed him to move inside the top five on GC.

On stage 13, which finished on the steep climb of Los Machucos, he was the only rider to stay with the race leader and his compatriot, Primož Roglič.

Pogačar ended up winning his second stage to move up to third overall, where he stayed heading into the second rest day.

After losing time on stage 18, he dropped down to fifth on GC.

On the penultimate stage, with one last chance to move up the standings, Pogačar launched an attack, going on an almost 40 km solo breakaway.

He eventually took his third stage win, winning by more than a minute and a half over the rest of the contenders.

The win allowed him to finish the Vuelta in third overall, the final podium position, and giving him the victory in the young rider classification.

Before the season started, Pogačar announced that he was making his debut at the Tour de France, where he planned on riding in support of Fabio Aru.

He made his season debut at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, where he won two stages on his way to winning the race.

At the curtailed UAE Tour, he won the fifth stage, which finished atop the Jebel Hafeet, and finishing second to Adam Yates on GC.

In March, cycling events were among those postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

He won the 2020 and 2021 editions of the Tour de France, winning three different jerseys during each Tour, a feat unseen in nearly four decades.

Comfortable in time-trialing, one-day classic riding and grand-tour climbing, he has been compared to legendary all-round cyclists such as Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Fausto Coppi.