Will Tadej Pogačar beat Mark Cavendish’s Tour de France stage wins record?
Slovenian records his 22nd win, putting record within reach by 2030, according to our number crunching
Whether he intends to or not, Tadej Pogačar is a man who breaks records. His dominant win rate in all kinds of races, from Grand Tours to Monuments, has placed him not only on several pages of the metaphorical history books, but well within the conversation of being the most successful male rider of all time.
He’s the first rider to win a Monument five times in a row, the first man to stand on the podium of all five Monuments in the same season, and the first to podium in the sport’s 10 most important stage races. This year, he is within touching distant of matching the record of Tour de France GC victories, should he win his fifth and join the small, legendary group of five-time winners.
And on Monday, he took himself one place closer to one of the sport’s most talked-about records, the Tour de France stage wins tally. Winning his 22nd Tour stage atop the climb to Les Angles on stage 3, he now ranks joint fifth in the list of most prolific stage winners, joint with Andre Darrigade and behind only André Leducq, Bernard Hinault, Eddy Merckx and Mark Cavendish.
The current record belongs to Mark Cavendish, with 35 stage wins, which he set in 2024, finally beating Eddy Merckx’s record of 34, which Cavendish had matched in 2021. Prior to 2024, Merckx had held the record since 1975, so for nearly 40 years.
Could Pogačar beat the record again, just a few years after Cavendish lifted it by one? As of Monday, he has 22 stages to his name, 13 off Cavendish’s tally and 14 off an outright record.
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