Here is a partial list of his 2025 victories: four stages of the Tour de France and the general classification; three stages of the Critérium du Dauphiné and the general classification; the World Championship road race, the European Championship road race, the Tour of Flanders, Liège–Bastogne–Liège, La Flèche Wallonne, Strade Bianche; and he became the only rider to win Il Lombardia five years in a row.
That would be a great palmarès for any rider’s career, but Pogačar did it in one season. All in all, he won 20 races this year, two more than 21-year-old Paul Magnier, who registered 18 victories, all in second-level races and five alone in the season-ending Tour of Guangxi. Pogačar’s UAE Team Emirates–XRG teammate Isaac del Toro finished the year with 16 victories. Together, the two riders accounted for 36 of their team’s 95 victories in 2025, the most ever by a cycling team in a calendar year.

The king

But the story of the year was Pogačar’s absolute dominance of the sport and, to a lesser degree, the resignation it has created in the peloton among almost all riders, except Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma–Lease a Bike). But all of Evenepoel’s victories came in time trials and in road races in which Pogačar did not ride, and all of Vingegaard’s victories, including three stages and the GC of the Vuelta, came in races in which the 27-year-old Slovenian did not ride. In the races where they went head-to-head, the Dane’s record shows a string of 11 second places.
For the record, Pogačar’s 20 wins are the most in a year for a male rider. But 26-year-old Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx–Protime) chalked up 27 victories in 2025, including the Gravel World Championship. She may very well be the best rider in the world, male or female, as she has already won 118 races, 10 more than Pogačar. The difference is that she is a one-day rider and has not yet challenged for a Grand Tour GC. That is probably why no one writing about women’s cycling has suggested that she is dominating the sport or that her success is stifling, and even discouraging, competition.
But as this year has progressed and all the major road races came to resemble each other – breakaway is caught, Pogačar bursts away from rivals, wins – more and more commentators suggested that many riders don’t even try to race against the world champion, but resign themselves to competing for the lesser podium places. (You can read the latest such story here.) Is it really a problem? Will it become a big problem?

The upstart

Not if 19-year-old Paul Seixas has anything to say about it. A native of Lyon, Seixas rides for the French team Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team and has registered only three victories this year, all of them in the Tour de l’Avenir, a French race for young semi-professionals that is not part of the WorldTour. However, previous winners include Joop Zoetemelk, Greg LeMond, Miguel Induráin, Laurent Fignon, Egan Bernal, and Pogačar, who have won 18 Tours de France, so it is far from insignificant.
I have included him in this year-end review because he seems to have the talent and the ambition to become a major star. In 2025, he placed third in the European Championship road race, seventh in Il Lombardia, and eighth in the Dauphiné – and he has spoken openly about his desire to dethrone the king. Asked on Eurosport’s Bistrot Vélo if he expected to eventually beat Pogačar, he said, “Not right away. But we know his best performances. We’ll train to try and beat him. That’s sports… There’s a lot of work to do, that’s for sure. You have to reach his level to win races today, the biggest races, in any case.”
He went on to say that, rather than discouraging him, Pogačar’s dominance is an inspiration. “It doesn’t matter what the [stage] profile or the effort, between 2 minutes and an hour, he is the strongest. It’s really crazy. He’s also a source of inspiration because that is how you become complete [as a rider] and win the general classifications. You try to understand how he does it.” Seixas then acknowledged the age difference between the two and said that this means he doesn’t have much time to reach the king’s level. “Because the goal is not to beat him when he’s on the decline, but when he is at his best level,” the prince-in-waiting said.

Race of the year

There were a few races that stood out for several reasons, but primarily because they were dramatic and had surprise winners. For example, Mattias Skjelmose’s stunning upset in the Amstel Gold Race, when he beat Pogačar and Evenepoel in a sprint to the line; or that crazy Giro d’Italia, with all the drama surrounding UAE’s Juan Ayuso and Isaac del Toro, and the heroics of Simon Yates (Visma–Lease a Bike) on the penultimate stage, with a big helping hand from Wout van Aert, to pull out the GC win.
But for my money, the race of the year was the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s superb ride on the Col de la Madeleine. It was an intelligent, powerful, and unexpected performance by the 33-year-old Visma–Lease a Bike rider and the first Tour de France win by any French rider since the last of Jeannie Longo’s three successive wins in an early and ultimately failed version of the Tour in 1989. But Ferrand-Prévot had to go to hell and back to get herself in shape for such a dominant performance.
“Because my preparation was so hard for the Tour de France, now I don’t really see myself doing the same again,” she said after the race. “Over these past months, dedicating myself to this has been good, it’s paid off. But it’s also been really hard. That’s why I couldn’t do it multiple times in the year. It’s so much sacrifice.”
Incredibly, she was criticised from several quarters for what she had done to her body to achieve her cycling dream. Yes, her body. She handled the criticism with aplomb and honesty and instantly became a model for women and girls around the world. And in a recent interview with Ouest-France, she set herself apart from the so-called “cannibals” of cycling, like the sport’s GOATs, Eddy Merckx and Pogačar.
“It’s a bit contradictory, but I don’t necessarily like competition,” she said. “It’s not what drives me to ride a bike. Racing every weekend isn’t something I particularly appreciate. Mentally, for me, it’s too tiring. What I really like is to prepare for a specific goal and put everything into place to try and attain it. That’s why I came back on the road. I had the Tour de France as my objective.”
In other words, she doesn’t want to win everything. But she also said in the interview that winning the Tour once was “great… but doing it twice could be even better.” So she will return to the race next year. With her rivals now knowing what to expect, it should be another terrific – and unpredictable – race.