Pogacar's Strava says it all: Slovenian superstar was lots and lots faster than his competition

Everyone was stunned by Tadej Pogacar’s astonishing solo ride at the UCI Road Race World Championships in Zürich. The Slovenian did what no one thought possible, attacking 100 kilometers out from the finish. The Strava logs for this wild ride have now been posted, and the data doesn’t lie.

On Pogacar's personal Strava page, a ride of 267 kilometers (seven kilometers shorter than the actual course) is listed. He completed the ride in 6 hours, 18 minutes and 37 seconds, covering a total elevation gain of 4,369 meters. This means the Slovenian rode the grueling course at an average speed of 42.4 kilometers per hour. The caption reads "World champion!!!" With more than 100,000 kudos, Pogacar is breaking records even in this way.

Along the route, he managed to do so quite effectively. This was expected given his unmatched solo performance. But the way he did it… Along the way, the Bergstrasse and the Witikon climb were the toughest challenges. There, he shattered the Strava records. The former climb was short but steep. Pogacar was eleven (!) seconds faster than Jake Stewart, who recorded the second-fastest time. He also blitzed through the Witikon climb, completing it much faster than his competitors. With a time of 5 minutes and 15 seconds, he was seventeen seconds faster than Ben Healy. No wonder he left his competitors in the dust.

Pogacar beat Mixed Relay teams during his solo

Also remarkable was the world champion’s performance on the local circuit. He doesn’t hold the KOM (King of the Mountain): that honor belongs to Ben O'Connor and Jay Vine. The Australians completed the Mixed Relay on September 25 with a time of 24 minutes and 35 seconds. The fact that Pogacar (not on a time trial bike, without a team around him, and in a 274-kilometer race) posted the fifth-fastest time, being only twenty seconds behind, is incredible. The next rider who posted a time during the road race was Pavel Sivakov, who was able to stay with Pogacar for quite a while and was ‘only’ thirty seconds slower.

To make things even more impressive, the winner of the Triple Crown can not only compete with a trio of time trialists but also make entire WorldTour teams bow down. This is evident from the UCI rankings: between 2023 and 2024, the Slovenian earned approximately 19,000 UCI points. Compared to professional teams, he would rank seventeenth — ahead of teams like dsm-firmenich PostNL and Cofidis. In other words, the Slovenian one-man army would accumulate enough points to claim a WorldTour license on his own.

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