The 26-year-old Slovenian registered an astonishing 25 wins this year, including the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France and the World Championship Road Race, only the third male rider to win all three races in the same year, and the first since Stephen Roche in 1987. And he won the world championship with a jaw-dropping solo of 100km that had veteran riders and commentators searching for appropriate superlatives.
In this super year, Pogačar also won the Strade Bianche, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the Grand Prix Cicliste de Montral, the Giro dell’Emilia and, last but definitely not least, Il Lombardia with another eye-catching solo of ‘only’ 48.5km. What else is there to say about a rider who dominates his sport in the manner of Eddy Merckx, who has already called him the GOAT, the greatest of all time.
Pogačar also won the award in 2021, but he said at the awards ceremony, held at the Pavillon Gabriel in Paris, that this time it meant more to him. “I was still young [then],” he said. “As the years pass, we realize the importance of things. I feel honored that all the work has been recognized. It will be almost impossible to have another year like this, but I will do my best.”
If the competition for the women’s Vélo d’Or was less cut-and-dried, Lotte Kopecky of the SD Worx–Protime team was a no less deserving winner. The 29-year-old Belgian won 16 races in 2024, including her second Road Race World Championship in a row, the European Time Trial Championship, the UAE Tour Women, the Tour de Romandie Féminin, the Paris-Roubaix Femmes avec Zwift, both titles at the Belgian national championships, Strade Bianche Donne, the Tour of Britain Women and the Simac Ladies Tour. Not a bad haul at all.
Kopecky – who, like Pogačar, was also named the winner of the Eddy Merckx Trophy – came within 21 seconds of winning her first-ever Grand Tour in this year’s Giro d’Italia. But because of her robust physique, she is not a superior climber and may therefore become the best rider, male or female, never to win a Grand Tour.
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However, she excels in every other aspect of cycling. She is a superior time trial rider, an excellent sprinter, one of the best female one-day riders in the world and she has also had success in track, having won six world championships and six Olympic gold medals. And she is a good enough climber to have come in second in the 2023 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.
In a video message recorded at her team’s training camp in Finland, Kopecky said, “I’m super happy and proud to win this Vélo d’Or. The people who are close to me know that I am thankful – my family, my friends, and also my teammates from SD Worx–Protime. Last year [it] was pretty close but this year I got it… I’m already looking forward to next season.”
The Vélo d’Or (French for “Golden Bicycle”) was established in 1992 by the French publication Vélo Magazine and was given annually to the male rider considered to have performed the best over the year. It was first given to the best female rider in 2022, when it was won by Annemiek van Vleuten. Another Dutch cyclist, Demi Vollering, a former teammate of Kopecky, won the award last year.
