Tadej Pogacar spent 2025 stretching cycling's sense of proportion, not by loudly chasing history but by quietly inviting comparison with it.

As the season unfolded, references to the great Eddy Merckx -once whispered, now unavoidable- stopped sounding indulgent and began to serve a practical purpose: a way of describing a rider whose authority extends across terrains, months and race types.

At the heart of it all sat a fourth Tour de France title — one short of the record — the race Merckx himself treated as cycling's ultimate currency.

Pogacar's latest triumph in July did more than add to an already heavily-garnished trophy cabinet, it reinforced the Tour as the axis of his dominance.

The UAE team Emirates rider controlled the general classification with clarity and flamboyance rather than caution, asserted himself in the high mountains, claimed the polka-dot jersey and closed the race by winning the final individual time trial.

In an era defined by control and risk management, he made the Tour feel unusually open — and unusually settled.

The Merckx comparison, however, comes with caveats, starting with the man himself.

"It is difficult to compare two different eras," the Belgian said, before adding, almost casually, that his own may have been tougher.

"I think that in my time there was more competition. Today, in the classics, Pogacar mainly has to watch out for (Mathieu) Van der Poel and (Wout) Van Aert. In the Grand Tours, it's a few other rivals."

Monuments

Merckx claimed 525 career victories.

Pogacar needed roughly five seasons to reach the 100-win mark. Even at his current, remarkably high rate, the Slovenian would need to keep winning at the same pace for another two decades to approach the Belgian's total — an impossibility.

Where the parallel persists is elsewhere.

Like Merckx, Pogacar has spent the season erasing the modern borders between stage racing and the classics.

His Tour de France victory was not an isolated peak, but the natural high point of a campaign built on constant presence with titles in the Tour of Flanders, Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Giro di Lombardia Monument classics.

He arrived in July having already shaped the spring, moving seamlessly from white roads to cobbles and steep one-day finishes, rarely racing to limit losses and more often to impose himself.

That posture framed the Tour itself. There was no sense of a rider hiding form or narrowing objectives. Instead, the race unfolded with the strongest rider expected to prove it repeatedly and publicly.

Pogacar did so without defensiveness, racing as though expectation was something to exploit rather than manage.

At 27, the outline of his legacy is already strikingly complete, even if he has yet to claim the Vuelta, a grand tour he is almost guaranteed to win if he takes the start.

Only two of the five Monuments - the most revered classic races - remain unchecked: Milan's Sanremo and Paris' Roubaix. This season, he came close to both, finishing on the Sanremo podium and second on the Roubaix velodrome.

They stand less as gaps than reminders that, even as comparisons with Merckx grow, Pogacar's story is still being written.

Reuters