Pogačar Still Reigns but Seixas and Del Toro Ignite the Battle for His Throne

The weekend’s big takeaway is that Paul Seixas, Juan Ayuso, and Isaac del Toro are not going to be content to wait for the Tadej Pogačar retirement party.

Layer in Iván Romeo, Oscar Onley, and Matthew Riccitello, and things are heating up in the seething and restless in cycling’s 23-and-under crowd.

It is way too early to say any of them are ready to topple the established duopoly of Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard, but look down the road, and the rumbling could reach a full boil faster than anyone could guess.

This weekend’s GC season preview from the Algarve to Spain to the UAE confirm that no one’s going to be happy waiting their turn.

Men’s elite pro cycling sits in a rare era. Pogačar and Vingegaard have split the last six Tours de France between them, and Pogačar is recasting the so-called Big 4 era into something closer to a one-man demolition derby.

The hierarchy at the top looks set in stone, but no one’s taking it sitting down.

There’s a fresh sense of urgency and ambition pulsating out of Lidl-Trek, Decathlon CMA CGM, a revived Ineos Grenadiers, and a wounded but still dangerous Visma-Lease a Bike that will play out across 2026.

The current guard should control the grand tours in the near term, but racing rarely follows a straight line.

For the first time this decade, we’re seeing real glimpses of a new generation of riders who could take it straight to Pogačar. Let’s dive in:

Pogačar isn’t going anywhere

First off, Pogačar is far from his past-due date.

Despite the chatter of burnout or even boredom last season, a condensed calendar for 2026 — with the monument sweep, a record-tying fifth Tour crown, and a third world title all on the line this season — will keep him fresh and motivated.

At 27, he’s hitting full Pogi peak powers. Even if his upside margin for improvement is nearing its ceiling, he’s far from being vulnerable.

Make no mistake, Pogačar will continue to crush souls for years to come.

“I believe that Tadej has many more years left, and very good ones. His age is helping him progress in every aspect,” Joxean Fernández Matxin told Marca. “That maturity and experience he gains each year make him better, help him understand himself better, train better, and pace himself better. From my point of view, this year he’s going to progress even further.”

Backed by the super team UAE Emirates-XRG, there’s a huge wall of defense to defend Pogacar’s crown for as long as he wants it.

Beating him outright in the short term borders on fantasy. Any lapse would require an extraordinary Vingegaard coupled with an injury or other out-of-character slump from Pogačar.

Everyone knows that to get close to Pogačar, they need to blow past Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel.

What’s happening in the peloton right now is the mad scramble to find the next rider who can eventually inherit the throne. Or be there to pounce if there’s a wobble that opens up the Tour.

That narrative will drive grand tour racing for the next several years.

Isaac del Toro: The heir and the threat

Everyone already knows the 22-year-old from Baja California is the peloton’s next big thing.

He won Mexico’s first WorldTour race Sunday at the UAE Tour, crushing Evenepoel and toppling Antonio Tiberi to keep the trophy in-house for title sponsors.

“Isaac is a great champion,” Tiberi said. “He could become even bigger than Tadej. We all saw what he did last year at the Giro d’Italia, which he almost won. He’s still super young and a real champion, so chapeau to him.”

Del Toro’s momentum makes him the best among cycling’s new wave.

He nearly won — should have won — the Giro last year. For 2026, he’ll make his Tour debut alongside King Pog.

Pogi’s most imminent threat to his throne will be right by his side, and that could set up some interesting palace intrigue.

Or will it?

Del Toro so far has shown none of the ego or over-ambition that would suggest any sort of dissent within the realm, and he seems smart enough to know that riding with Pogačar is far better than racing against him.

It’s easier to imagine a scenario where Pogačar and Del Toro team up to dispatch Vingegaard and everyone else in the French Alps in week 3, go hand-in-hand to the line at Alpe d’Huez, with the Mexican finishing second in Paris to the King.

The balancing act for the UAE brass will be keeping Del Toro happy enough — his huge long-term contract will help — until Pogačar decides to ride off into the sunset.

Under contract through 2030, Pogačar isn’t going anywhere.

To keep Del Toro happy, perhaps Pogačar will skip the Tour one year to do the Giro-Vuelta double — rounding out the grand tour sweep — and give Del Toro his spot in the sun, and return to win another yellow.

He could even sit out a year and pull off cycling’s version of a Michael Jordan comeback. Why not?

Some believe Pogačar wants to equal and even better Lance Armstrong’s unofficial and tainted seven-win record, so that scenario could be a reach.

Would El Torito directly attack Pogi at the Tour? Probably not.

A more likely scenario would be Del Toro getting into a big break or Pogi getting tangled up in some mess, a similar scenario to how Del Toro wound up in pink at last year’s Giro. Then things would get spicy real fast.

Paul Seixas: French prince in waiting

If Del Toro is already established as the prince in waiting, French sensation Seixas is the mistral brewing on the horizon.

At just 19, he confirmed this weekend that he’s the real deal with his first pro win.

His victory on the Foià climb came on the same asphalt where Pogačar won his first pro race in 2019. The symbolism was not lost on the French press, which immediately turned up the volume.

More intriguing about Seixas that truly sets him apart from every Bernard Hinault wanna-be is that he can time trial. Unlike Romain Bardet, Thibaut Pinot, or David Gaudu, Seixas has the chops against the clock, and in grand tour racing, that’s a non-negotiable.

“We saw it already last year, especially in the Europeans and at the end of the season that he is going to be also one of the greats,” said Algarve winner Ayuso. “I said it before the race, I think he was going to be one of the main rivals. He just showed it again.”

There’s a growing chorus in France that Decathlon should send Seixas to the Tour. Why wait?

Send him now, no pressure, learn the race, and then within two to three years, he can be ready to race to win.

More likely, the team will pack him off to the Vuelta on a climber-friendly course for a low-pressure grand tour debut. At 19, there’s no need to throw him into the cauldron so soon.

Everyone agrees that there’s something special in Seixas that extends beyond the post-Hinault hype and hope that’s buried every generation since.

France may finally have a legitimate, modern Tour contender.

Keeping him healthy, motivated, and injury-free is critical in the next phase for this diamond-in-the-rough.

If he’s as good as some say he is, the results will continue to shine.

Onley, Ayuso: Unbridled ambition

This weekend also delivered early returns on two of the transfer market’s biggest wagers.

Ayuso answered with a stage and the overall at Europe’s first real GC throwdown at Algarve, out-dueling Seixas and established podium man João Almeida in a win that electrified the Lidl-Trek organization.

The now German-backed squad went all in on Ayuso as a long-term Pogačar disruptor, and though he’s battled his own windmills under the yoke at UAE, a liberated Ayuso might emerge as a legitimate podium contender this summer.

Like Evenepoel, he’s wildly inconsistent in the high mountains. Also like the Belgian, his strong TT makes him a natural for three-week grand tours if he can level out the peaks and valleys.

Ineos Grenadiers also reconfirmed the aggressive new tilt it’s shown so far in 2026, and Onley just missed the podium. Two solid climbing stages and a decent fourth overall, with Frnech signing Kévin Vauquelin fifth, are solid returns on the UK team’s big transfer moves.

“That’s exactly why I wanted to join this team, to play like this in these kinds of races,” Onley told reporters Sunday. “Maybe we don’t have the strongest guy outright, but together with our strengths, we can make things happen. There’s definitely some room for improvement.”

Florian Lipowitz rode quietly in the Algarve and is expected to build toward later targets.

Almeida remains one of the most bankable grand tour podium threats in the peloton and feels destined to convert one into a victory sooner rather than later.

Tom Pidcock, fresh off a stage win at the Ruta del Sol, is sharpening his bid to crack the Tour de France top five this summer.

Cycling’s never seen so much talent bubbling just below the surface. Who will be the rider to topple the Pogačar reign?

Even more depth in the wings

Pogačar and Evenepoel broke the mould when both became teenage sensations. Cycling is no longer built on waiting your turn or team-mandate hierarchies.

Modern racing runs on data. If the numbers justify it, age is irrelevant. Riders get their chance.

Teams are pouring millions into talent identification pipelines. One sport director told Velo, “Before I never even checked the U23 results until words, now I am looking at junior results all year long.”

UAE’s Fernández Matxin is famously obsessed with tracking the stars of tomorrow in the depths of the junior and espoirs ranks. Visma-Lease a Bike has spent millions on its development team, though it’s yet to produce the Vingegaard heir it desperately needs.

Red Bull recently confirmed two full-time talent scouts.

Who else is already coming up?

Lorenzo Finn (Red Bull development squad), Jarno Widar (Lotto Intermarché), and Jørgen Nordhagen (Visma-Lease a Bike) are generating buzz.

In Spain, Pablo Torres (UAE Emirates-XRG) and Movistar’s Iván Romeo, fresh off a stage win and overall triumph at the Ruta del Sol, headline a long-awaited revival. No Spanish rider has won a grand tour since Alberto Contador at the 2015 Giro.

“On the bike, above all in the time trial, he reminds me of Miguel [Indurain] because both took care of the little details,” Eusebio Unzué told AS. “They are similar in that way.”

Riccitello, Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike), and Derek Gee (Lidl-Trek) still have room to progress before hitting their respective peaks among North Americans. Enzo Hincapie, racing on Red Bull’s official U19 junior development team, and Ashlin Barry, on Visma’s development team, are both promising U.S. juniors.

Every rider has their own respective trajectory. Some take a few years to truly excel, but in today’s cycling, everything is accelerated.

Is there a proven Pog-slayer hidden in today’s treasure trove? That’s not clear just yet.

The Pogačar hierarchy seems set for the next years — barring disaster — but there are more teams with deeper pockets and restless ambitions than ever.

The pressure will continue to build. Something is bound to snap.

That tension will keep things interesting even if Pogačar keeps on winning.

Evenepoel odd man out?

Now 29, Vingegaard has the bad luck of coinciding with the Pogačar era.

Vingo deserves more credit than he sometimes gets and has never finished worse in any grand tour since his Vuelta debut with 46th in 2020.

Even if he never adds another yellow jersey to his trophy case, he remains one of the defining grand tour riders in modern cycling. Vingegaard seems stuck behind Pogačar but is still miles ahead of everyone else.

The Dane has won two yellow jerseys and one Vuelta a España, and he’s putting the Giro d’Italia in his sights this season to complete the grand tour sweep. Smart move, all things considered.

The odd man out in the current power struggle could be Evenepoel.

Evenepoel’s hot-then-cold start to 2026 in his high-profile debut at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe reconfirms what many view as the Belgian’s Achilles heel.

Though he’s a world-class time trialist and one-day racer, inconsistency across three weeks could keep him from truly taking it straight to Pogi or Vingo in the next few years.

He’s only about 18 months younger than Pogačar, and Vingegaard isn’t going anywhere else either.

Evenepoel was looking for answers this weekend after bleeding time in both decisive uphill finishes at the UAE Tour. He came to UAE to blow everyone out of the water and confirm his ascendancy.

Instead, he was beaten by Del Toro and barely hit the top 10.

“I always come to win and to fight for the overall. I didn’t have that level this week,” Evenepoel said from UAE. “The values were there, but I still lost a minute. So the race is getting faster and faster. It was not my best week.”

Of course, February isn’t July, but if his rivals are already flying, and Pogačar and Vingegaard aren’t even racing yet, what does this say about Evenepoel’s spot in the hierarchy?

The aero bullet’s done an extraordinary job at squeezing out the maximum from his engine, and his move to Red Bull should result in some incremental gains.

He believes a Tour win is within reach. To get there, he may need to worry not only about the giants in front of him, but the storm building behind.

With everyone else bucking for the third, Evenepoel looks to be the rider with the biggest target on his back this season.