Pogačar, of course
If any rider but the UAE Team Emirates–XRG leader had been given the award, the Earth would have shifted on its axis and swallows would not have returned to Capistrano. Since losing the 2023 Tour de France to Jonas Vingegaard, the 27-year-old Slovenian has been virtually unbeatable. In 2025 he registered a total of 20 wins, including the Tour for the fourth time (by a margin of 4:24 over Jonas Vingegaard), the Road Race World Championship, the Critérium du Dauphiné, Strade Bianche, the Tour of Flanders, La Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Il Lombardia (for the fifth time), to name just a few of his victories. If he doesn’t win every race he rides, it only means that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, he is human.
In the year’s UCI Rankings, his total of 11,620 points is nearly double that of the rider ranking second, Vingegaard, and was enough to put Slovenia in third place in the Nation Rankings, behind only Belgium and Denmark. But it’s not only his numerical achievements that make him the rider of the year and, so far, of the century, but the manner of his victories – often by long, devastating solos – and the simple fact that whenever he is entered in a race, he is expected to win and almost always does
Such is his dominance of the sport – he dominates road racing the way the Eiffel Tower dominates the Paris skyline – that no other rider’s name could have even been considered for the Vélo d’Or. Some of the other riders on the shortlist – Remco Evenepoel, Jonas Vingegaard and Mads Pedersen – had very good years. Evenepoel won the ITT World Championship, Vingegaard dominated the Vuelta and Pedersen – the second-best male rider of the year, in my book – won 13 races, including five Grand Tour stages. But Pogačar really has no credible rivals. He doesn’t just deserve the award; he embodies it. As the Vélo d’Or’s website puts it, the award “celebrates not only victory, but also flair, consistency, and the ability to thrill fans throughout the season.” That is Pogi down to his shoelaces.
The Slovenian world champion previously won the award in 2021 and 2024 and is now level with Chris Froome with three wins. Since the Vélo d’Or was first awarded in 1992, Alberto Contador is the only rider who has won it four times. Guess who’s going to match that next year.
A game-changing victory
In my mind, the women’s Vélo d’Or competition was between Ferrand-Prévot and Lorena Wiebes, who won a total of 25 races, more than any other rider, male or female, which I thought would be the decisive factor. But the manner of Ferrand-Prévot’s victory in the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (TdFFaZ) was a game-changer for women’s Grand Tour racing. She went all in with her training and demolished the field. Her margins of victory over the previous two winners of the race, 3:42 over Demi Vollering and 4:09 ahead of Kasia Niewiadoma, and her dominance on the ascent of the Col de la Madeleine spoke volumes about her superiority.
Ferrand-Prévot also won two stages of the TdFFaZ and Paris-Roubaix Femmes, came second in the Tour of Flanders and third in Strade Bianche Donne. But it was her ride in the Tour that left the biggest impression of any performance in 2025 and it raised the bar for what we can now expect from women’s Grand Tour performances. The Vélo d’Or for women was first awarded in 2022. Annemiek van Vleuten, Vollering and Lotte Kopecky were the previous winners.
Wiebes’s tally of 25 wins included the inaugural Milan-Sanremo Donne, Le Samyn des Dames, the Classic Brugge-De Panne, Gent-Wevelgem In Flanders Fields, two stages and the points classification of the Giro, two stages and the points classification of the TdFFaZ, five of six stages, the GC and the green jersey at the Simac Ladies Tour and, to top it off, the UCI Gravel World Championship. That might have been enough in any other year to win. But she will have to contend herself with the Women’s Eddy Merckx Trophy for best Classics rider; Pogačar (of course) won the corresponding award for men.
Kévin Vauquelin was awarded the Trophée Bernard Hinault for best French male rider of the year, beating the likes of Paul Magnier, Paul Seixas and Valentin Paret-Peintre. Ferrand-Prévot (who else) won the Trophée Jeannie Longo as the best French female rider of 2025.
