There is plenty of representation for professional cycling in the 2026 Laureus World Sports Awards, with Tadej Pogačar, Tom Pidcock, Simon Yates, and Egan Bernal all among the nominees.
Pogačar is again nominated for the flagship World Sportsman of the Year award, while Pidcock is looking to double up on the award he won last year, World Action Sportsperson of the Year. Yates and Bernal will face off against each other in the World Comeback of the Year category.
The Laureus awards are a prestigious occasion in global sport, with the trophies lifted in-person by some of the biggest global superstars over the years. Former Classics star Fabian Cancellara is among the panel of judges.
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No cyclist is officially recorded in the Laureus annals as a winner of the World Sportsman or World Sportswoman of the Year. However, in a reflection of his own cycling results sheet, Lance Armstrong did receive the award in 2003 before it was rescinded 10 years later upon his doping confession.
Pogačar was nominated for the main award for the first time last year but lost out to the Olympic champion pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis. The Swede is once again among Pogačar’s competition this time, alongside the tennis rivals Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, football’s Ballon d’Or-winning Ousmane Dembéle, and the MotoGP world champion Marc Márquez.
The award is essentially based on the 2025 season, in which Pogačar won a fourth Tour de France title, a second straight World Championships road race title, and three further Monuments in the Tour of Flanders, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and Il Lombardia.
Elsewhere, Pidcock is up for the Action Sportsperson of the Year award he won last year. Pidcock’s stunning Olympic victory helped him to that crown last year, but he is in the mix once again after “reinforcing his reputation as one of world cycling’s most versatile athletes”. The British rider took the European Mountain Bike Championship, as well as finishing on the podium of the Vuelta a España, which was a breakthrough moment in his road career.
There are two cyclists in the Comeback of the Year category. Simon Yates, now retired, has been given the nod for his Giro d’Italia triumph in 2025 and the circularity with the devastation he felt on the Colle Delle Finestre seven years previously.
Laureus states that Yates “surrendered a 38-minute lead,” and while that’s not true, he did go from a position of total dominance in the race to cracking dramatically on the Finestre and losing 38 minutes on that stage just two days from the finish. Yates repeatedly returned to try and crack the Giro, and just when it looked like it might never happen for him, he mustered a victory from thin air, over the same climb, in one of the most dramatic Grand Tour denouements we’ve ever seen.
“Yates’ comeback story was a tale of mental resilience,” reads a press release from Laureus.
Yates is up against Bernal, who won stage 16 of last year’s Vuelta a España, marking his first major victory since his life-threatening crash of 2022. The Colombian, who’d won the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia already, crashed into the back of a lorry while training in his home country, suffering multiple spinal injuries, and has steadily been working his way back ever since. He might not be quite back at his prodigious former level, but the Vuelta win marked a major milestone.
The winners will be announced at the Laureus World Sports Awards ceremony in Madrid on April 20.
