Pogacar had barely finished celebrating his latest Tour de France when he lined up on Sunday against 1,177 amateurs on the 15-kilometre climb up Krvavec, the mountain where he took his first junior win in 2009.
The plan was simple. The organisers gave the amateur field a seven-minute head start and sent Pogacar up the road to catch them. He did not.
Frederik Niessen, a German ultra-cyclist, crossed the line first in 45 minutes and 49 seconds. Pogacar rolled in at 49:51. Six other amateurs beat him too, leaving the reigning Tour champion in eighth place on his own mountain.
From one amateur to seven
Last year’s inaugural edition had already produced an awkward moment. Andrew Feather, a 40-year-old British lawyer and four-time British hill climb champion, held off Pogacar for the win, finishing more than three minutes clear of him overall.
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That was one amateur. This year it was seven.
Niessen is not a stranger to long, painful mountains. According to his own bio he is a full-time cyclist and coach who specialises in Everesting, the challenge of accumulating 8,848 metres of climbing in a single ride. He has already ridden more than 12,000 kilometres in 2026 and won the Glocknerkonig Ultra in Austria earlier this summer.
His Strava caption after Krvavec, in English, read: “Life goal achieved. I have never felt so good.”
“I suffered”
Pogacar gave his rivals tactical advice before the start, telling them to pace themselves.
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“Don’t rush, the first two kilometres are the hardest, and whoever rushes there will pay,” he said before the ride.
He followed his own advice, and it still was not enough.
“At the foot it was a bit of chaos, with even a crash, but after that I kept riding well and suffered,” Pogacar said afterwards.
His personal best on Krvavec sits around 31 minutes, set in a solo effort before the 2024 Tour. On Sunday, threading through a field of enthusiasts on a climb with 1,177 metres of elevation and an average gradient close to 8 percent, he was closer to 43 minutes on the timed climb.
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Isaac del Toro and Pascal Ackermann were among the WorldTour guests who joined him.
A charity ride, not a race
The Pogi Challenge is the centrepiece of a three-day festival that raises money for the Tadej Pogacar Foundation.
Still, twelve months on from the first edition, the joke has grown teeth. One amateur ahead of him could be waved away as a novelty. Seven, on a climb he has ridden more times than anyone else in the field, is starting to look like a tradition.
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