Tadej Pogačar smashes his own KOM record on Coll de Rates by 24 seconds

In the middle of a training camp with his UAE Team Emirates-XRG team on the Costa Blanca in Spain, Tadej Pogačar smashed his own king of the mountain record on Coll de Rates. The World Champion slashed his own Strava KOM record by 24 seconds, clocking 11:57 on the 6.32km with 5.5% average elevation gain on a popular training and testing climb near Calpe. He averaged a speed of 32.3 kph and exceeded the time of 12:21 that he had set just a year earlier.

The segment came during a December 19 training ride he named ‘Merry Christmas and happy new year.’ Pogačar, alongside 2026 teammates Kevin Vermaerke, Florian Vermeersch, Nils Politt, Pavel Sivakov and Domen Novak, covered 226km in just over six hours, averaging 36.8 kph while climbing a total of 4,203 metres.

Not only did he smash his own record, but the Slovenian also crushed the KOM that was just set by Cedrik Bakke Christophersen earlier that same day on a different segment. The 24-year-old Dane was celebrated by his Unibet Rose Rockets team on social media for his time of 4:19 on a 2km section with 6.4% elevation gain named ‘Test coll de rates’, a time that beat the previous record of 4:20 set by - you guessed it - Pogačar.

But it was a short-lived celebration, as Pogačar set a time of 4:06 on the same day, and retook his KOM crown.

Good sport, Unibet Rose Rockets posted again, saying "That didn’t age well".

Last week, Pogačar outlined his schedule that includes targeted Monuments of Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix and Liège-Bastogne-Liège before turning his attention to stage races that will lead up to his bid to win a historic fifth Tour de France title.