“Yes, the best of his time,” Stephen Roche says, but he’s not ready to say that Tadej Pogacar is the best of all time yet.

Only Stephen Roche and Eddy Merckx had won both the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France before Tadej Pogacar did it in 2024. He also won the Rainbow Jersey at the World Championship road race.

Friday night, Pogacar won both the Eddy Merckx Trophy and the Velo d’Or at the 2024 version of the prestigious event. This was the culmination of a successful season that included two monument victories and other wins. In the crowd of famous people watching, Irish cycling legend Roche spoke to L’Equipe to praise the Slovenian boss of UAE Team Emirates.

Roche thinks about Pogacar’s Triple Crown win: “He had everything he needed to pull off this treble, so we were surprised without being surprised.” He needed the right conditions to win, and the World Championship route had to work for him. That was the case, so Roche and Merckx knew from the start of the season that they would be caught. What a great ambassador! I’m glad that happened.

Is Pogacar still able to rule over everything in 2025? “I think so, but we’re lucky that others are here too, like Remco Evenepoel, Jonas Vingegaard and Primoz Roglic, who have all been injured this year,” he says. “Vingegaard is the one who will do something in 2025. To finish second in the Tour after what happened to him (a bad crash in April), that shows something. Some more great Tours de France are on the way, and I think the level will level off a bit, since it’s hard to keep up.

Some people have already said that Pogacar, who is 26 years old, had the best season of all time in 2024. Roche clearly has a lot of respect for the Slovenian player, but he doesn’t think it’s time to call him the G.O.A.T. just yet. Because it’s hard to measure, I can’t say that he’s the best of all time. “Yes, he was the best of his time, but you also have to respect what Merckx, Indurain, and everyone else has done,” the 65-year-old says. I think he’s the best right now. He’s going to be one of the best players of all time no matter what, but we’ll see at the end. Right now, we’re a long way from that.