Has Pogacar changed cycling forever?

If there is one thing that great champions have, it is that they leave their mark on cycling in such a way that they even manage to change canons that seemed immovable. This era in which Tadej Pogacar is the great dominator undoubtedly leaves us with the return of offensive cycling, long-range attacks, and ultra-fast stages in a sport that is increasingly technological and measured.

This is how cycling has adapted to the Pogacar era

If there is one thing that the Tour de France 2025 leaves us, it is that it has been contested, from the first day, at spine-chilling speeds, with many hours riding at over 50 km/h on average. An evolution in competition rhythms that, for conspiracy lovers and those who experienced the murky cycling of the 90s and 2000s, can only mean that widespread doping has returned to the peloton with something that authorities are still unable to detect.

However, beyond whether there may be certainty in this explanation or not, the truth is that current cycling has little to do with that of those years, let alone with that of the past decade, before the emergence in the cycling world of Tadej Pogacar, and well, also of Van Aert, Van der Poel, or Evenepoel.
Before that, we had entered a cycling that many called YouTube Cycling, where classifications were decided by narrow margins and attacks were reduced to the last kilometers of the last climb of the day.

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But with the arrival of this generation led by Tadej Pogacar, we have once again enjoyed a type of cycling that had not been seen since the 70s and 80s, that of brave cyclists seeking to leave their mark by winning big, with spectacular attacks from afar. Cyclists so superior that they are even capable of winning in short distances, when it comes to deciding victory in the last meters, whether in grand tours or in classic terrain.

The immediate consequence of the superiority of these cyclists is the rise in the average level of the peloton, making races much more contested. To all this, we must add the advances in training, increasingly studied to the millimeter, where cyclists are monitored 24x7.
Bikes have also taken a huge leap with the growing attention to aerodynamics that have turned them into much faster machines.
And, of course, we cannot forget the great change that has been the control of every calorie of the cyclist's nutrition, leaving behind the dreaded bonks and managing to extract every watt from each cyclist.

For conspiracy lovers, it is worth noting that all these innovations towards a more technological cycling are also within reach of the common cyclist, as evidenced by popular competitions where the current level has little to do with that of just a few years ago.
An increase in level that has made cyclists lose their fear of long-range attacks, which are now faced as the only option to try to overcome the superiority of the best knowing that, reaching the finish line with them, the options are reduced to zero.

The typology of cyclists has also evolved. Pure climbers have little place in the peloton now when they used to be the references. We have seen in the Tour de France a Lenny Martinez, a prototype climber, suffer immensely just to keep up with the peloton on flat terrain. The current cyclist not only has to be an excellent climber but also has to be able to produce a lot of watts on flat terrain to avoid falling prey to echelons and cuts that can occur almost at any moment. And although time trials have lost importance with increasingly shorter stages, they remain essential for those who want to win in tours, having become a hyper-technological discipline in which everything is measured to the millimeter to scrape every second off the clock.

There is no doubt that we are in a golden age of cycling, with or without conspiracies, which is allowing us to enjoy not only a cyclist who is making history like Tadej Pogacar but also a middle class of cyclists who manage to offer a tremendous spectacle in almost every race.