Tadej Pogacar revealed that he had a chat with Eddy Merckx after winning Il Lombardia for a record-breaking fifth straight time on Saturday, emulating the cycling icon.
World champion Pogacar became the first man since Merckx in 1975 to win three of the sport's five Monument races in the same season, and also bested Italian legend Fausto Coppi in consecutive victories in the "Race of the Falling Leaves".
🌟 Monuments 🥉🥇🥈🥇🥇
— Cycling on TNT Sports (@cyclingontnt) October 11, 2025
🇫🇷 Tour de France 🥇🤩
🌈 World Championship 🥇
🇪🇺 European Championship 🥇
Tadej Pogacar believes it has been the best season of his career so far 🤩 pic.twitter.com/aKc8HsmPxW
The 27-year-old said that after the race, he spoke to Merckx thanks to his former mechanic Ernesto Colnago, the founder of the eponymous bike manufacturer, which has since 2017 supplied bikes to Pogacar's team UAE Emirates.
"Ernesto Colnago was here at the finish, and Eddy was calling him. We were speaking on the phone and it's really cool that he calls and we talk like this," said Pogacar, who is tiring of comparisons with the 80-year-old Belgian.
"It's been a lot of times I'm hearing this all the time, comparing with Eddie Merckx. But yeah, I don't like this kind of comparisons.
"I don't like that all the time you need to compare to somebody. Nobody likes to be compared to somebody all the time."
His win at Il Lombardia is another record to add to a growing list as Italian great Coppi strung four consecutive wins between 1946 and 1949, with his fifth coming in 1954.
Pogacar capped another stunning season in which he became the first man to win both the Tour de France and the world championship two seasons in a row.
And he is now also the first to finish on the podium of all five Monuments in the same season.
In April, Pogacar won both the Tour of Flanders and Liege-Bastogne-Liege, victories which go alongside third place in Milan-San Remo and second in Paris-Roubaix, which were both won by Mathieu van der Poel.