The 2026 Cycling Season Awards - Domestique Cycling Podcast

Tadej Pogačar won 22 races in 2026, including three Monuments and a fifth Tour de France. Then he crashed out of the Vuelta in August and did not race again. So was he still the rider of the year, or did Remco Evenepoel and Paul Seixas do enough to take it from him?

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The road season is over, and Bram and Ethan hand out the Domestique Awards. We pick a domestique of the year, a team of the year, a Grand Tour of the year, a moment of the year, a breakthrough of the year and a rider of the year.

Brandon McNulty won the domestique award for his work for Pogačar at Milan-Sanremo, ahead of Matteo Jorgenson and Florian Vermeersch. A few months later he was world champion. UAE Team Emirates-XRG win team of the year with 78 victories. Visma | Lease a Bike come close, with the Giro, Paris-Roubaix and 14 Grand Tour stages. Enric Mas’ Vuelta beats the Giro and the Tour as our Grand Tour of the year.

Our moment of the year is Wout van Aert beating Pogačar on the Roubaix velodrome. It is the second year in a row that this award goes to Van Aert. Seixas won eight races, finished fourth at the Tour at 19 and won Il Lombardia at 20, which makes him an easy pick for breakthrough of the year. To finish, we each choose our favourite race of the season and our biggest disappointment. Jayco AlUla and Mathieu van der Poel both come up.