In the middle of a training camp with his UAE Team Emirates-XRG team on the Costa Blanca in Spain, Tadej Pogačar smashed his own king of the mountain record on Coll de Rates. The World Champion slashed his own Strava KOM record by 24 seconds, clocking 11:57 on the 6.32km with 5.5% average elevation gain on a popular training and testing climb near Calpe. He averaged a speed of 32.3 kph and exceeded the time of 12:21 that he had set just a year earlier.
The segment came during a December 19 training ride he named ‘Merry Christmas and happy new year.’ Pogačar, alongside 2026 teammates Kevin Vermaerke, Florian Vermeersch, Nils Politt, Pavel Sivakov and Domen Novak, covered 226km in just over six hours, averaging 36.8 kph while climbing a total of 4,203 metres.
