It was a result known for two weeks, ever since Tadej Pogacar raised his arms atop the Tourmalet and smiled at the heavens, seizing the yellow jersey on stage six. It was a piece of history drafted long before the peloton reached the slopes of Alpe d’Huez on this final weekend.
Pogacar had increased his lead with victories on stage 10 and 14, and again at the Alpe’s summit on Friday. On Saturday, the Tour de France returned to Alpe d’Huez via the rarely used eastern back route, the Col de Sarenne. And although Pogacar couldn’t catch the breakaway to claim another stage, his name was already inscribed beside a new feat.
When he completes the race in Paris on Sunday, Pogacar will officially join an elite club of riders – Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain – to have won five yellow jerseys, leaving Chris Froome alone on four. At 27, Pogacar is the youngest to reach the tally, and on this evidence it would take something extraordinary – a freak injury, chronic boredom, perhaps an early retirement to take up stoneware pottery or tend to a smallholding – to prevent him winning a record-setting sixth and several more beyond.
This backdoor run up the Alpe was officially the queen stage of the 2026 Tour, featuring 5,000m of elevation gain over four Tour behemoths: the Croix de Fer, the Col du Telegraphe, the Col du Galibier and finally the Col de Sarenne. Pogacar led the hunt of the breakaway up the brutal hors categorie Sarenne, but the 3min 30sec gap was too much. A wild and often chaotic day of racing was won by Ecuador’s Richard Carapaz, wearing polka dots, who held off the chasers to claim his second stage in three days. It capped an impressive final week by Carapaz, who won the combativity award on four days and secured his place as King of the Mountains.
Yet stage 19, a day earlier, was Pogacar’s trophy moment in the Alps, up the famous 21 hairpins of the Tour’s most iconic climb, the leaders winding through thick layers of giddy fans inches from their faces. Pogacar scaled the Alpe in 35min 27sec, breaking a 29-year-old record. France’s Lenny Martinez of Bahrain Victorious pushed him to the end but lost by six seconds and beat his handlebars in frustration.
Martinez got closer than most. Pogacar was able to pick stage wins almost at will, adding five to his collection here. Pogacar now has 26 career stage victories at the Tour, nine behind record-holder Mark Cavendish. A mark set by a prolific sprinter is being hauled in by a mountain monster.
There are still new frontiers of grand tour racing to breach. Pogacar is yet to win the Vuelta a Espana because he’s raced it only once, when he finished third in 2019. He is still five wins behind Merckx’s total of 11 grand tour titles, although the Spanish race could yet be added to his palmares by the end of the year.
But like so many of his rides, Pogacar is already out on his own as the greatest road cyclist of all time. Merckx admitted as much two years ago and the Slovenian has only got stronger, quicker, more dominant.
His consistency remains astonishing. Pogacar has started nine grand tours and finished all of them on the podium. From his first victory in one of cycling’s five Monument races, winning Liege-Bastogne-Liege in 2021, he has not finished outside the top five in any of the subsequent 21 races, crashing out only once and winning 13 times. Merckx has 19 Monument wins, another record that once seemed unfathomable and is now vulnerable.
But for all the numbers, records and statistics, perhaps it is Pogacar’s relationship with Jonas Vingegaard that feels particularly telling. Three years ago, Vingegaard crushed his rival in their mouthwatering Tour de France head-to-head, proving too strong in the high mountains to win the Tour by seven-and-a-half minutes. “I’m dead,” Pogacar famously said after a chastening stage-17 defeat in the Alps.
It was Vingegaard’s second successive yellow jersey, and it drew the pair level on two Tours each. For all Pogacar’s obvious superpowers, it seemed hard to picture how he might ever be able to withstand Vingegaard’s extreme strength on hot days at altitude, up in the clouds where Pogacar would sometimes wilt.
Does their rivalry even exist now? “Pogacar v Vingegaard” has its own Wikipedia page and it hasn’t had a fresh entry for two years. When Vingegaard crashed out on stage 15 of this race, Pogacar bemoaned the loss of his “friend”, the unintended subtext being that the quiet frost between two fierce opponents had long since thawed. What was meant to be a historic rivalry is now historical.
There are no contenders to Pogacar’s crown. Remco Evenepoel finished this stage 20 in second place, which is where he will end the Tour on Sunday. The Belgian has transformed himself into an elite rider in the high mountains over the past two years and produced an outstanding performance in this Tour, yet he will still finish seven minutes behind the yellow jersey.
So Pogacar can spend a truncated stage 21 in Paris soaking in the moment after three hard weeks in the saddle, before considering what’s next. He may go for the missing Vuelta crown later this summer, before chasing a third successive world road-race title in Montreal in September. There are still mountains left to conquer, if Pogacar has the will to conquer them. And it is hard to imagine how anyone stops him.
