Pogačar vs Evenepoel

Lore & Background

The rivalry crystallised in 2020, when a 22-year-old Pogačar, still in his first full professional season, launched a series of devastating attacks on the Alps and Pyrenees to steal the Tour from a field that included established GC contenders. His style—attacking from 40 or 50 km to go, riding with a grin, treating 200 km mountain stages as a playground—shocked the cycling world and announced a new generation.

Two years later, in 2022, the script flipped. Evenepoel, the Belgian time-trial specialist who had already stunned the peloton with his Vuelta win that autumn, methodically controlled the Tour from the first Alpine stage onward. Where Pogačar thrived on chaos, Evenepoel thrived on precision: he matched attacks, neutralised gaps, and used his superior TT legs to bank time on flat stages. Pogačar, for once, could not find the rhythm to break his rival, and the yellow jersey changed hands in Brussels, not Paris.

The 2024 Tour saw Pogačar reclaim the throne, and the narrative of the rivalry—attack versus control, chaos versus order, the Slovenian firebrand versus the Belgian metronome—has become the central story of Grand Tour cycling. Commentators note that neither rider appears to be slowing; both are still in their early-to-mid twenties, and the next several Tours are expected to be as fiercely contested as the last.

In Their Own Story

The air above the Col du Galibier thinned to a whisper. Pogačar, still 38 kilometres from the summit, spun his cranks and simply went. The peloton scattered like a startled flock. Behind him, Evenepoel watched the gap open on his headrest display, jaw set, breathing in four-count rhythm. He did not panic. He did not chase. He waited eleven kilometres, then matched the Slovenian's cadence exactly, wheel to wheel, as if the mountain were a time trial they were sharing. Below, in the team cars, two directors stared at their radios and said nothing. The rivalry lived in that silence—the knowledge that neither man would blink first, not today, not on this road.

Reader's Guide

They were born two years apart, on either side of the Julian Alps and the Flemish plains, and the cycling world watched them arrive in the pro peloton within a season of each other. Pogačar, the Slovenian, attacked like a man who had never been told a gap was too large. Evenepoel, the Belgian, measured every watt and every second as if the Tour were a spreadsheet he intended to balance to zero.

2020 belonged to Pogačar. His attacks in the Alps were so early, so reckless, that rivals simply could not answer them. 2021 was his again, a second consecutive yellow jersey worn with the same easy grin. Then came 2022, and the Belgian took the Tour with a coolness that felt almost clinical—matching Pogačar's surges, then erasing any deficit on the time trials where his engine was simply larger. Pogačar finished second, and for the first time the Slovenian's smile looked like a question.

2024 returned the yellow jersey to Pogačar, and the cycle seemed to reset. But the deeper story is tactical: each rider now studies the other's weaknesses with obsessive detail. Pogačar knows Evenepoel will not chase a 40 km attack; Evenepoel knows Pogačar will not sit still on a 25 km climb. The mind-game is the race.

For the sport, the rivalry has done what few duels can: it made Grand Tour cycling feel urgent again. Two riders in their early twenties, both capable of winning all three major Tours, have turned the yellow jersey into a question with no settled answer—and that uncertainty is exactly what keeps millions of fans watching.

Did You Know?

• Evenepoel won both the 2022 Tour de France and the 2022 Vuelta a España in the same calendar year, a rare double for a rider under 23.
• Pogačar has completed the Grand Tour treble (Giro d'Italia, Tour de France, Vuelta a España), joining an elite list of riders who have won all three in their career.
• The two riders come from nations with very different cycling traditions—Slovenia, a small Alpine country, and Belgium, a flat-land nation famous for cobbled classics—yet both have become Grand Tour specialists.
• In 2022, Evenepoel's route to the Tour title leaned heavily on his time-trial superiority, a tactical contrast to Pogačar's preferred method of winning through sustained mountain attacks.