When Tadej Pogacar crossed the finish line at the Tour de France last month, he didn't just win his fifth yellow jersey — he tied cycling history. The Slovenian rider had matched the record held by five legendary champions. Now, at just 27 years old, he's going for something only eight cyclists have ever achieved: winning all three of the sport's biggest races, called Grand Tours.
Pogacar announced he'll race in this month's Vuelta a Espana, cycling's third and final Grand Tour of the year. The race starts August 22 in Monaco and wraps up September 13 in Granada, Spain, with 21 stages of mountains, sprints, and time trials ahead of him.
"Spain is a country I love to visit and race in, and I think the time is right to go back," Pogacar said. He first rode the Vuelta as a young rider in 2019, finishing third. "The motivation is high to finish off the year in a good way and the Vuelta will be a big target. The team is strong and we hope to do good things."
The math makes his chances look almost certain. Pogacar won this year's Tour de France by more than six minutes over Belgium's Remco Evenepoel. He crushed last year's Giro d'Italia by nearly ten minutes. Most cycling experts expect him to win the Vuelta by an even bigger margin — if he wins it, he'll become just the ninth rider in history to hold all three Grand Tour titles at once.
What's almost as remarkable as his Grand Tour ambitions is his dominance across the entire sport. Beyond his five Tour wins and two Giro titles, Pogacar has won cycling's World Championships twice, the Italian classic Il Lombardia five times, Tour of Flanders three times, and Liege-Bastogne-Liege four times. This year alone, he's won six out of seven major World Tour races, only finishing second at Paris-Roubaix in a photo finish with Belgium's Wout van Aert.
He's showing no signs of slowing down. Cycling fans have nicknamed his trademark attack style "the Pogacar explosion" — that sudden burst of speed that leaves rivals gasping. After such an exhausting season, most riders would rest. Instead, Pogacar plans to ride the World Championships in Montreal just one week after the Vuelta ends.
For cycling enthusiasts, the real excitement isn't just whether he'll win — it's watching a generational talent do something rare. Only eight riders in the entire 120-year history of the Grand Tours have collected all three crowns. If Pogacar succeeds in Spain this September, he'll cement his place among the sport's greatest of all time.