It seems like every day, Tadej Pogačar beats a new record. On Tuesday, he won a Tour de France stage on Bastille Day for the third time, making him the most successful rider on France's national day, on the same day that he climbed a spot in the rankings of days spent in the yellow jersey.
Stage 10 marked Pogačar's 60th day wearing the iconic yellow jersey for leader of the Tour, drawing one day clear of three-time winner Chris Froome, level with Miguel Indurain, and only behind two of the sport's very greatest.
Considering he's already won the same number of Tours as Froome but many more stages and arguably in a more dominant fashion, it may be surprising that Pogačar has only just surpassed Froome's yellow jersey record – it certainly feels like he's spent a long time in yellow, often grabbing the lead of the race earlier than Froome's racing style used to permit.
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One thing worth remembering is that Pogačar only wore the yellow jersey for a single day when he won his first Tour in 2020, grabbing the lead from Primož Roglič on the penultimate day time trial. He also didn't wear the yellow jersey once in the year that he was beaten, in 2023. And of course, this is only his seventh Tour, compared to Froome's 10.
But now he's surpassed Froome, who is next for Pogačar to beat? Well, perhaps unsurprisingly it's two of the riders who are still ahead of him in the stage wins statistics, Eddy Merckx and Bernard Hinault, plus Miguel Indurain.
Indurain can pretty much already be discounted, as he and Pogačar are tied on 60 – but stage 11 will mark Pogačar's 61st day in yellow, so he's already up to third as soon as he starts on Wednesday.
Hinault's tally sits at 75, which Pogačar has a little way to beat, and he won't get there this year. If he stays in yellow for the rest of this year's Tour, which seems fairly likely, he will end this edition on 71, so he still needs to secure another five days in yellow to beat Hinault and move up to second overall.
And then there is Merckx, the man Pogačar is constantly compared to, and whose records he is always trying – or succeeding – to beat. Merckx's haul of yellows sits at 96 days (which could have been 97, but on one occasion he declined to wear the jersey after leader Luis Ocana crashed out). However, given that the Tours of his era featured multiple split stages, Merckx has actually worn yellow for 111 individual stages, so quite a long way off Pogačar's current tally.
Like when we were calculating Pogačar's stage win rate and if (when) he might beat Mark Cavendish's outright record, we crunched the numbers on days spent in yellow, too.
If he keeps yellow to the end this year, he'll finish the race on 71 days in yellow, which would also give him an average of about 10 days in yellow per Tour ridden. Which is exceedingly impressive, given he wore it for zero days in 2023 – though it's still a little bit down on Merckx's extraordinary rate of 13 days in yellow per Tour.
That means that he could hit 80 days in 2027, and 90 in 2028, and therefore challenge Merckx's record in around 2029. Which is, coincidentally, the same year we projected that he might beat the stage wins record.
But of course, none of this is an exact science; it's not really a science at all. More so than stage wins, day spent in yellow relies on so many different variables, not least route design. Give us one Tour that is front-loaded with flat stages and no GC action until the second half, and Pogačar's potential time spent in yellow is suddenly cut very quickly.
And then there's obviously the competition. Pogačar is in a league of his own right now, sure, but riders like Isaac del Toro and Paul Seixas are developing quickly, and could soon be battling him for yellow in a way he hasn't been challenged in recent years.
And finally, there's the same issue we spoke about when discussing the stage wins record: longevity and motivation. Is Pogačar going to keep coming back to the Tour as his main goal every year, winning as much as he does currently? And how long will he do that for? For all we know, he might stop next year, or he might never wear yellow again. So any kind of serious projection seems particularly futile in this case.
What is sure, though, is that with every passing day, Pogačar is staking more of a place in cycling's history books, breaking more and more records, surpassing the statistics of some of history's best riders. Soon, he will more than likely be the second or third most yellow-jersey-wearing male rider in history, and perhaps similar on the stage wins standings too.
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