Tadej Pogačar equated one of the most prestigious achievements in cycling to winning the World Championships

(CNN) – Tadej Pogačar capped his dominant and record-breaking year on Sunday by winning the men’s road race at the World Championships, becoming the first male cyclist in 37 years to win the rainbow jersey, the Tour de France and the Giro from Italy in the same year. .

Having completed cycling’s “Triple Crown”, as this trio of victories is called, Pogačar joins an exclusive club consisting only of Eddy Merckx, Stephen Roche and Annemiek van Vleuten.

Although van Vleuten achieved this feat in 2022, no male cyclist has won all three races in the same year since Roche in 1987, when the sport looked markedly different than it does today.

Since then, cyclists have become increasingly less likely to try to win multiple races in the same season; No male cyclist had even won the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia in the same year since 1998, until Pogačar won it this year.

This season has confirmed the Slovenian’s status as a generational talent as, unusually for a cyclist, he can win races of almost any length and on a variety of terrain. This includes one-day races such as the world championships, which require the explosiveness that Tour de France competitors typically sacrifice in favor of the endurance required to win a three-week stage race.

“After years of competing in the Tour de France and other races, I never had the world championship as a clear goal, but this year everything worked out,” Pogačar said afterwards. “After a perfect season, winning the World Cup was a really big goal and I can’t believe it happened.”

The 26-year-old showed his absolute dominance by winning all these competitions. On Sunday in Switzerland, he attacked just over 100 kilometers from the finish, caught the initial lead and pulled away from France’s Pavel Sivakov, who was initially the only runner capable of challenging him, and completed the last 50 kilometers of the race. alone.

It was not planned to attack so early, Pogačar added after the finish. “We had plans to keep the race under control but the race started quite early and I don’t know what I was thinking but I just let myself go and luckily I did it,” he said.

Pogačar ultimately finished 34 seconds ahead of Australia’s Ben O’Connor, who won the silver medal, and Dutchman Mathieu van der Poel, the defending champion, who finished on the podium and led the pursuit group.