Part of the reason for this development is all the data now available to us so that we have records broken almost every week regarding feats that were not part of the set of records before we had the data – such as ‘the most goals scored in a football match on the first Tuesday after Christmas’ or ‘the fastest tennis serve ever by a left-handed player who once met the president’.
But I think the main reason is that sports are competing with television and movies for sponsors and spectators, and the visual media are now overrun by superheroes. In the past 10 years, superhero films have become a dominant genre in Hollywood, with franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC Extended Universe leading the movement. In the past 10 years, Hollywood has produced well over 100 superhero movies. As a result, either by cultural diffusion, when a certain element spreads from one cultural institution to another, or just because the plethora of superheroes has raised the bar for what spectators expect of a spectacle, it’s no longer enough to be a star; you must be a superstar to attract attention.
This also applies to cycling. For example, during last Saturday’s Strade Bianche, when Tom Pidcock and Tadej Pogačar took off together on the Monte Sante Marie, one commentator said something like, “And here you have two superstars riding together.” That got me thinking. Pogačar is undeniably a superstar and perhaps the greatest road racer of all time. But what about Pidcock?
The 26-year-old Q36.5 rider had a wonderful ride on Saturday, staying with the otherwise uncatchable Slovenian for about 60 km and even waiting for him after he had crashed on a high-speed descent. Pidcock even said that it was “one of my best performances ever, I think. I’m happy with that.” And then he added, “But of course, in the end, he still attacked and rode off.” It’s that “but of course” in Pidcock’s statement to journalists that reflects both his honesty and his recognition that Pogačar is made of different stuff than he is.
Pogačar is a superstar, while Pidcock is ‘merely’ a star, a terrific rider, exciting to watch, courageous and strong. Pidcock was so good on Saturday that he drove Pogačar to another superstar performance. I’ve become a fan and will be rooting for him in every race, if not to win, then to put in another star performance. He is a terrific one-day rider, but I know that there are three superstar one-day riders that will almost always beat him: Pogačar, Remco Evenepoel, Mathieu van der Poel. Of these three, the Slovenian is the superstar of superstars because he also excels in Grand Tour races.
Grand Tour racing is where you’ll find the rider who, in my opinion, is the sport’s fourth superstar, Jonas Vingegaard. Some cycling aficionados would probably disagree because the Dane concentrates his efforts on a single race, the Tour de France, which he has won twice, and does not ride the Classics. They would also probably say that he needs to win at least two more Tours to be awarded superstar status. But I disagree. When he is healthy and in top form, he is the only rider in the world who can beat Pogačar in a Grand Tour, as he already has done twice. That makes him a superstar in my book, though I admit that his star burns less brightly than that of his only rival.
In any case, my point is that only these four riders can be accorded the superstar status today. I would love to add Wout van Aert to this elite group, but his last significant victory on the road came in the 2023 E3 Saxo Classic when he beat both Pogačar and van der Poel. Since then, crashes and injuries have affected his form and this year, he seems to have lost a certain competitive ferocity that is an essential characteristic of superstars.
But what about the other Slovenian rider, Primož Roglič, who has won 88 races, including five Grand Tours – four Vueltas and one Giro – but never the Tour de France and beat both Pogačar and van der Poel in the 2020 Liège-Bastogne-Liège? That’s an excellent question. But the two superstars were young then and just starting to hit their stride (Pogačar was 21, van der Poel 23), while Roglič was in his prime.
And in that year’s Tour de France, Pogačar got his revenge in a way that revealed the difference between the two riders. Roglič came into the stage-20 ITT leading his young compatriot by 57 seconds, but he simply blew the ride. Whoever saw him labor up the slope of La Planche des Belles Filles towards the finish line that day, his face contorted with anguish, his helmet askew, will never forget it. My feeling is that a superstar might have lost the time trial, and the Tour, to Pogačar that day, but he would not have looked so desperate, so much unlike a superstar. Roglič has been, and remains, one of cycling’s big stars, as Pidcock is now.
There are no guidelines for defining a superstar, but I think I’ll know one when I’ve seen him or her race a few times. Superstars are rare birds, the elites of sports: Messi and Ronaldo, Federer, Djokovic and Nadal. They must be rare because if everybody is a superstar, then nobody is a superstar. Sports and spectacles are not enriched by having dozens of superstars. On the contrary, just as a rare coin gives it its value, it is the rarity of the superstar that makes a sport shine.
