Cycling phenom and Tour de France champion Tadej Pogačar reveals his training strategies, on-bike nutrition, and future aspirations

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. This podcast, my website and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness, and we've established a great team of analysts to make this happen. It is extremely important to me to provide all of this content without relying on paid ads. To do this, our work is made entirely possible by our members, and in return, we offer exclusive member-only content and benefits above and beyond what is available for free. If you want to take your knowledge of this space to the next level, it's our goal to ensure members get back much more than the price of the subscription. If you want to learn more about the benefits of our premium membership, head over to peterattiamd.com/subscribe. My guest this week is Tadej Pogačar, a professional cyclist and three time winner of the Tour de France in 2020, 2021 and most recently 2024 For those who may not know his story, Tadej, who today is just 26 years old, has already been compared to the most legendary all-around cyclist of all time, Eddie Merckx. He's generally referred to now as the second coming of Merckx, whose nickname was the Cannibal for the manner in which he devoured the competition. Tadej was a very successful junior rider, winning some of the most prominent races prior to his breakthrough year in 2019 When he signed on with the UAE team, he won the Tour of California that year and won three stages of the Vuelta a España, one of the three grand tours en route to a overall third place finish as well as the young rider title. And then of course in 2020, he was the unexpected winner of the Tour de France. This is something we will discuss in detail in this podcast. Now since that time, Tadej has basically rewritten the record books. He's done things that people generally have thought, frankly, impossible in the modern era of cycling, largely because of the specialization of the sport today. Typically, cyclists will focus on one type of race, and yet, Tadej has demonstrated an appetite to basically conquer everything he does. That means he's competing not just in grand tours and shorter stage races, but also some of the most grueling one-day races of all time. In fact, there are five such races. He has already won three of them, and of course, we discuss his aspirations around the others. 2024 was kind of a momentous year. He first won the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France, a double feat that has not been accomplished for nearly 30 years, and he set a record-winning 12 stages across both of these. He is currently the number one ranked cyclist in the world, a record that he's held for about 170 weeks and counting. And he is going to attempt in a week to do something that, again, many people thought would never be possible in the modern era of cycling, which is to complete something known as the Triple Crown, which is winning the Giro, the Tour, which he's already done, and then managing to win the World Championship Road Race. I have wanted to interview Tadej for some time, and of course, the opportunity of him racing at the GP Montreal, just two weeks out from the World Championship, was remarkable and fortuitous, so I was very grateful to have his time. In this conversation, we talk about his remarkable 2020 season, where he took the world by storm and won the Tour de France in one of the most dramatic finishes that race has ever seen. We talk about the highs and lows of his career since that time. We talk about how he trains, how nutrition has evolved on the bike, and why that allows cyclists today to do things that were previously thought impossible. This is a bit of an interesting podcast if you are not a cyclist, because some of the things that he talks about are simply difficult to wrap your mind around. But hopefully my reaction to those things, for example, his power numbers, will give you a sense of the fact that I'm really talking to one of the most fit human beings on the planet at this moment. So without further delay, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Tadej Pogačar.
Tadej, thank you so much for making time. Obviously, you just raced yesterday, you've got to race tomorrow, and we're two weeks out from the World Championships. So to give us any time is amazing. Thank you.

**Tadej Pogačar** (4:44)