{"id":359148,"date":"2025-12-21T05:55:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T05:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/359148\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T05:55:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T05:55:15","slug":"merry-christmas-tadej-pogacar-smashes-his-own-strava-kom-on-coll-de-rates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/359148\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Merry Christmas’ \u2013 Tadej Poga\u010dar smashes his own Strava KOM on Coll de Rates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tadej Poga\u010dar<\/a> returned to break his own Strava KOM<\/a> on the famous Coll de Rates climb in Spain, setting a time of 11:57.<\/p>\n

The UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider claimed the record last December, in a time of 12:21<\/a>, but has now taken a further 24 seconds off the record ascent, on a Friday spin. The official verified Strava<\/a> segment is 6.43km at 5.5%, meaning 347m of elevation gain.<\/p>\n

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Poga\u010dar was in the area for his team’s training camp, with Calpe or Benidorm on the Costa Blanca a popular spot for squads this time of year. The Coll de Rates is a regular haunt for pro riders testing themselves.<\/p>\n

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The world champion set the record time, which meant he averaged 32.3km\/h, as part of a 226km ride<\/a> he titled “Merry Christmas and happy new year”. Last year, he set the record on 20 December, this year it was 19 December; it seems like a final flourish before heading home to enjoy the end of 2025.<\/p>\n

The whole ride, which took over six hours, was ridden at 36.8km\/h, despite taking in over 4,000m of elevation gain. That’s some festive ride.<\/p>\n

Before Poga\u010dar, the record was held by Jonas Vingegaard<\/a>\u2019s former ColoQuick team through Peter \u00d8xenberg Hansen<\/a>, who set a record of 12:38.<\/p>\n

Poga\u010dar rode with teammates including Kevin Vermaerke, Florian Vermeersch, Domen Novak, Nils Politt and Pavel Sivakov.<\/p>\n

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The climb itself was seemingly ridden as a team time trial, in order to give the 27-year-old the best chance of succeeding in his goal.<\/p>\n

Poga\u010dar will begin his 2026 season at Strade Bianche in March, before lining up for Milan-San Remo, the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix and Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge.<\/p>\n

His season will build to targeting a record-equalling fifth Tour de France<\/a> in July, but it feels clear that his focus is on Roubaix and San Remo first, the two Monuments he is yet to win.<\/p>\n

At his team’s media day<\/a> earlier in December, Poga\u010dar said: “I think if I could choose one [race to win between one extra Tour title or Roubaix] it\u2019d be Roubaix. I\u2019ve already won four [Tours], so if I win four of five\u2026 there is a bigger difference between zero and one than four and five.”<\/p>\n

The Slovenian has already been spotted training for Roubaix<\/a>, months away from the cobbled race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tadej Poga\u010dar returned to break his own Strava KOM on the famous Coll de Rates climb in Spain,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-359148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}