Tadej Pogačar just logged the biggest solo victory of his Grand Tour career – here's how it stacks up in his gallery of lone raids

As Tadej Pogačar's dominance of cycling continues at the Vuelta a España, he keeps on breaking new ground. The Slovenian is known for his long-range solo rides, but his effort on Tuesday's fourth stage in Spain, a short but sharp blast through the mountains of Andorra, saw him log his longest Grand Tour solo victory yet.

Pogačar's 32nd Grand Tour stage win came as he blasted away from his erstwhile GC rivals, including Felix Gall, whose Decathlon CMA CGM team had been setting a hard pace early on the first-category Collada de Beixalis.

Racing three minutes up the road, he recorded a 50km solo to the line before finishing 2:39 up on the impressive neo-pro Jarno Widar – which was also his biggest ever winning margin in a Grand Tour stage.

The solo victory is 6km longer than Pogačar's previous longest solo Grand Tour stage win, taken over the Col du Tourmalet at the Tour de France earlier this summer. The winning margin was a single second greater than that day, too.

It's only his third-longest solo win of the year, though, ranking below his triumphs at Strade Bianche (79km) and stage 1 of the Tour de Suisse (72km). Remarkably, he holds the four longest solo wins of the 2026 men's WorldTour season.

Pogačar's domination at Andorra la Vella isn't the longest Grand Tour solo stage win in recent memory, however. In fact, it's far from it. We only have to cast our mind back a few weeks to the Tour de France Femmes, where Norwegian rider Sigrid Haugset won with a monstrous 88km ride to Poligny.

The second-longest Grand Tour solo win also came at the Tour de France Femmes as Annemiek van Vleuten stormed into the race lead with a 70km effort to Le Markstein en route to overall victory.

Recent men's Grand Tours have also seen their share of long-range victories, with Bob Jungels' 60km solo ride to Châtel at the 2022 Tour de France the longest of them.

A nod, too, to Adam Yates' 59km ride to glory in Granada at the 2024 Vuelta a España, Alessandro Covi's 54km breakaway win at Marmolada at the 2022 Giro d'Italia, and Ben Healy's 50km ride into Fossombrone at the same race the following year.

Pogačar's longest solo

Pogačar's masterful ride in Spain might be his longest at a Grand Tour, but it's far from the longest of his career, even if his strength is such that he might well have won the stage had he attacked as the flag dropped, 104km from the finish.

Instead, the honour of Pogačar's biggest ride goes to the 'fifth Monument' of cycling, Strade Bianche. He tamed the white roads of the Italian Classic for the first time in 2022 with a mere 49km solo ride launched from the famous 11.5km-long Monte Sante Marie sterrato sector.

A year later, win number two came 23km from the line, his move launched on the Colle Pinzuto. His masterpiece came in 2024, however, again with an acceleration on Monte Sante Marie, some 81km from the finish.

Pogačar, emulating Frank Vandenbroucke at the 1999 Liège-Bastogne-Liège, told reporters exactly where he'd attack, though perhaps not as precisely as the mercurial Belgian, who pointed out the door number of the house where he'd launch on the Côte de Saint-Nicholas.

His UAE teammates had chased down the early break and a later attack by Quinn Simmons, before he launched from Tim Wellens' wheel on an uphill stretch. That was that, despite a chase group including the likes of Tom Pidcock, Maxim Van Gils, and Toms Skujinš, and he shot away to win by almost three minutes in Siena.

"When it was really raining a lot, I felt good and in my mind was to push and go solo," he said later. "Isaac [del Toro] and Tim [Wellens] did a super good job to make a super hard race, and it was a moment where you couldn’t see anything; it was so muddy. I decided to go on the attack there, and I knew it was going to be long, but I knew if I got the gap I just go through to the end."

His second-longest win came at the same race in 2026, with his solo length down just a touch at 79km. Again, Monte Sante Marie hosted his big move, albeit in more pleasant weather conditions.

Rather than launching from a group of 25 or so, he left behind a smaller selection this time around, with eight others – including Del Toro and teenage French phenom Paul Seixas – unable to match his acceleration.

The ambitious and impressive Seixas attempted to chase alone. He was joined by Del Toro and the rest on the run-in as Pogačar raced clear to a two-minute lead. In the end, he won by a minute as Seixas announced himself as a current star, rather than a hot prospect.

"I saw [Seixas] was chasing really hard on the steepest part of the climb on Sante Marie, and I said to myself ‘I’ll go all-out to the top then I’ll see," Pogačar said. "Either he can come to my wheel, or there’ll be a gap. In the end it was enough, and I saw Isaac and Jan were there behind so this was enough to go alone.”

The best of the rest

Beyond his wins on the Tuscan sterrato, Pogačar can count an awe-inspiring five further race wins with solo rides of 50km or more.

Next on the list is his sole European road title to date, captured in the French town of Guilherand-Granges in late 2025. Pogačar attacked 76km from the end of the hilly 202km race, drawing out Remco Evenepoel. He was on his own a kilometre later, though, and would cross the line 31 seconds up on the Belgian as Seixas rounded out the podium 3:41 down.

The 2026 Tour de Suisse hosted his 'only' other 70km+ solo ride, which came on the opening day of the race. There was a sense that his rivals in the peloton weren't even going to try to put up a fight when Pogačar jumped clear 70km from the line in Sondrio.

He quickly caught and passed breakaway survivor Frederik Dversnes before putting over two minutes between him and anyone else at the finish. On day one, the GC battle was already over.

Pogačar's first Road World Championships triumph in 2024 deserves a mention, too. After finishing third the previous year, he wasn't going to miss out on the rainbow jersey in Zurich, and so set off 100km from the line on the 274km course.

He had help along the way as Jan Tratnik dropped back from the early break, and at 50km, the solo wasn't among his very longest, but the win stands among the most impressive of his career.

While once Pogačar's solo attacks held some element of risk and mystery, in 2026, his moves feel similar to his Swiss effort. He races away, and immediately, there is no doubt that he will win. This season, there has almost been an air of resigned defeat as Pogačar rides away. There will certainly be more additions to this list in the months and years to come.

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