The 2026 Tour de France served up an epic battle that lasted for day after day between two protagonists of the highest calibre with different skillsets, a tale of epic breakaways, intriguing team tactics and reversals of fortune, building to a spectacular climax on the race’s toughest stage. The contest for the green jersey of points winner between Mads Pedersen and Jasper Philipsen was a classic.

Those hoping for something similar in the race for the yellow jersey of overall winner were disappointed, and rapidly. Any suspense was eliminated with 42km of stage six remaining, high above the ski village of La Mongie, when Tadej Pogacar dislodged Jonas Vingegaard and the other putative race favourites on the Col du Tourmalet. It was a familiar stinging attack, and a familiar outcome, with the Slovene opening a lead that looked insurmountable, as indeed it was.

Analysing the race for the maillot jaune to the RMC radio station, the former FDJ United manager Marc Madiot did not mince his words: “There was one single rider who attacked in this Tour: Tadej Pogacar. He attacked once, and everyone understood it was finished.”

Unfortunately for the neutrals, the art of cycling’s greats boils down to this: they don’t so much kill suspense as tie it up and eviscerate it before jumping up and down on its steaming remains. The neutrals have to make do with Pedersen and the green jersey, or Richard Carapaz and the polka dots.

From that moment on the Tourmalet, the chances of Pogacar joining Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Induráin as a five-times Tour winner were nailed on, and on Sunday evening, the world champion duly entered the record books. Even with the rise of Paul Seixas and Remco Evenepoel’s confirmation as a man of the Tour, few would bet against “Pogi” taking the absolute record in 2027 if he chooses to do so.

Pogacar is exceptional in many areas, but in the elite club of quintuple Tour winners he also stands out: he is younger than the other four and, unlike all those who have stood in Paris as a five‑time winner of the world’s greatest bike race, there were no glitches or question marks to disrupt his serene progress to the record books. Unlike all the previous true greats, at no point in the past few weeks could Pogacar wonder if victory might slip away.

Speculation that he might have switched to black shorts in the final week to disguise stomach issues doesn’t cut it as a glitch – not compared with the broken nose that left Hinault looking like a boxer who’d had a bad night in the final week of win number five after a finish-line crash at Saint-Étienne. Or with the open wound on the crutch that dogged Merckx throughout the 1974 race, needing “constant care, bathing, the application of cream and sterile plasters, and cushioning with bits of foam and plasters”. Merckx did win eight stages in that Tour, but he was close to collapse on the mountain-top finish at Pla d’Adet and was never the same athlete again.

Similarly, although he was eventually stripped of the victory for doping, 2003 was the only Tour when Lance Armstrong did not have the race sewn up until the final time trial, while in 1995, “Big Mig” Induráin and his Banesto team had to cope with a day of crisis in the Massif Central en route to Mende. Anquetil, famously, was run close by Raymond Poulidor in 1964, and could thank his lucky stars that “PouPou” suffered a puncture in a key time trial.

In the pantheon of cycling’s greatest champions, Pogacar has long since outstripped Big Mig, physically impressive but essentially a Grand Tour specialist who shied away from one-day Classics and never won a world road race title. He is far above the calculating but charismatic Anquetil, another who never shone in the Classics, although Pogi will never have the chance to match “Master Jacques” most insanely quixotic career challenge, winning the Dauphiné Libéré stage race (now known as the Tour Auvergne Rhone Alps) and the Bordeaux‑Paris motorpaced marathon without a day off.

When you get to Hinault, the statistical game becomes more nuanced, the debate more interesting. Pogacar has forged ahead of the “Badger” in major one-day wins – 13 Monument Classics and counting, plus two world road titles – but Hinault has won more Grand Tours, having won the Vuelta and Giro twice each, to Pogacar’s single Giro win. As for Merckx, the Slovene has won fewer Grand Tours, fewer world titles and fewer Monuments than the “Cannibal”, who also, famously and painfully, claimed the world one-hour record.

The debate over who is the greatest will continue and could well take a further twist if Pogacar rides the Vuelta and world championships later in the year, because if he starts those races, the chances are he will win both. Only when Merckx and Hinault were in their absolute prime could that be written, and that is the best reflection of where the past three weeks have put him.