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.
“I kept on looking over my shoulder thinking he was going to come up at some point, but he didn’t – he didn’t manage to catch me,” Feather told Cycling Weekly.
“There were literally thousands of people at the end… Everyone came out to watch him in action. He probably wanted to cross the line first, so I felt slightly guilty that I took that away from him,” he laughed.
The Brit led the event solo after five minutes of climbing, averaging around 400 watts for his effort, or 6.2 watts per kilo. “[Pogačar] was about two and a half minutes quicker than that, so he must have been doing probably close to seven [watts per kilo],” he said.
“It just shows you that he’s a completely different class, but it’s amazing just to have that absolute direct comparison to the best rider at the moment in the world, maybe ever as well.”
After the event, the world champion presented Feather with a trophy on the podium and shook his hand. “He said, ‘Great ride. Well done’,” the Brit said. “The only thing I regret is I should have gotten a photo with him afterwards. It’s obviously a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Pogačar gave his own humble verdict to the Tour 202 podcast afterwards. “I tried to catch everyone, but I couldn't,” he said. “Hats off to the winner.”
Asked whether his UAE Team Emirates-XRG should recruit Feather, he said: “Our team is already full. But if someone can climb that fast, you can always use them. Maybe he never wanted to be a pro. Everyone has their own path.”
Feather flew back to the UK following his victory, and arrived home in Bath around 3am, ready to begin work on Monday at 8am.
His next goal is the UK National Hill Climb Championships, an event he last won in 2023, which takes place this year on 26 October, on the 834m Bank Road in Matlock, the Peak District.
“Now I’ve got to get into the mentality of riding a two-minute climb over the next 10 days,” he said. “There's a lot of people in the mix. It won't necessarily be won by a climber. It would be won by a sprinter.”
Feather’s Pogi Challenge victory was filmed by GCN and will be made into a YouTube video to be released in the near future.
