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Tadej Pogacar is on the verge of matching the record for Tour de France victories with a fifth title at just 27 years old, a feat that has led some observers to argue his dominance has made the sport dull to watch.
That view was echoed earlier this year by former three-time world champion Peter Sagan, who himself holds the record for most green jerseys, the award given to the Tour's best sprinter, with seven.
The same accusations were laid against Spaniard Miguel Indurain when he won the Grande Boucle, a French nickname for the Tour de France meaning "the big loop," five times in a row from 1991-95, or Briton Chris Froome when he won four out of five between 2013 and 2017.
They were 27 and 28 respectively when they won their first Tours. In cycling terms, Pogacar should only now be starting to reach his peak years, meaning he could go on to win several more Tours. "Winning is nice. I will never deny it's a nice feeling to cross the line first," he said on Wednesday.
One of his chief rivals, Remco Evenepoel, said being beaten by Pogacar is anything but boring. "I see it as being super impressive, the performances that he's putting out," said the 26-year-old Belgian, who sat second in the Tour's overall standings after Thursday's 18th stage.
"I'm looking up to that, I try to learn from that, and I try to reach that level as well. He's a superstar, he's the best rider ever, so I don't think people should consider it as boring. I understand if you watch television and he goes whenever he wants, it's boring. But for us, it's a challenge, and it's a big honor to race against a champion like that."
Evenepoel has provided some excitement in this year's Tour, beating Pogacar into second in back-to-back stages, one a mountain top finish and the other a time-trial. But he has also been left in Pogacar's wake when the reigning champion won three stages with uphill finishes.
"It's exciting to see it from very close by," said Evenepoel. "You should not forget, we are witnessing history."
Irish journalist David Walsh started covering cycling in the 1980s and has seen the periods of dominance by Indurain and Froome, as well as the drug-tainted years of Lance Armstrong and his US Postal outfit. Walsh wrote three books about Armstrong's doping and was one of the chief voices exposing the sordid practices in that dark period of cycling history.
Some people have questioned how Pogacar can be so dominant if he is not taking illegal substances, but Walsh has no doubts about the two-time world champion.
"There were Tours where other riders were just as dominant," Walsh stated. "Lauren Fignon, for example, in 1984 was really dominant. In a much less exciting way, Miguel Indurain was dominant in the early 90s. That left me a little bit cold. This one doesn't. Pogacar makes domination exciting."
Walsh compared Pogacar to tennis players like Pete Sampras and Roger Federer, but said that whereas those two were not dominant on every surface, "Pogacar rides in all the races that shouldn't suit him" and usually wins there too.
"He's a generational talent, and my argument would always be, enjoy him because we shall almost certainly not see his like again."
British magazine Cycling Weekly argued it was the strength of Pogacar's UAE Emirates-XRG cycling team which made races dull, rather than the Slovenian's swashbuckling long-range attacks and almost super-human uphill acceleration.
French journalist Alexandre Roos, who works for l'Equipe, a French sports newspaper, said you have to accept a certain amount of boredom in professional cycling. But he said that what might seem boring in the present can often age like fine wine, pointing to Eddy Merckx's stage 17 victory at the 1969 Tour.
"The stage to Mourenx was boring," said Roos. "But almost 60 years later, we still talk about that stage to Mourenx as a legendary Tour stage."
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