‘He didn’t manage to catch me’ – Tadej Pogačar beaten by British hill climber at event in Slovenia

In the last two weeks, Tadej Pogačar has won the UCI Road World Championships, the European Championships, and a record-breaking fifth Il Lombardia, but his streak was brought to a shock end on Sunday, when he was beaten by a British hill climber at his own event. Forty-year-old Andrew Feather, a full-time lawyer and four-time national hill-climb champion, was the only rider to hold off the world champion at the Pogi Challenge, a new event set on the Slovenian’s local Krvavec climb, in which more than 900 people took part. Pogačar gave the challengers around a six-minute head start, and then hunted them down on the 13.9km mountain. Feather who clocked a time of 44:15 – three and a half minutes slower than the Tour de France winner, but enough to hold him off by more than two minutes.