Five Tour de France wins would put Tadej Pogacar level with Merckx, Anquetil, Hinault and Indurain; the official summit of the sport. Lance Armstrong, though, believes Pogacar isn’t thinking about five. He never was. Instead, the disgraced cycling great knows exactly what number lives in Pogacar’s head, calling into question his potential record-setting fifth win.

It all kicked off with Anthony Walsh, who runs the Roadman Podcast, and he believes Armstrong is right.

“I’m not sure Lance is wrong,” Walsh wrote on X. “The record books say those seven Tours never happened. Fine. But millions of people stood on the roadside and watched them happen. The riders he beat were, almost to a man, doing exactly what he was doing. We scrubbed the wins from paper. We never scrubbed them from the sport’s memory.

He added, “There’s a difference between a record being deleted and a record not existing. Everyone in the sport knows the difference. Pogacar knows it better than anyone, because he’s the one riding in its shadow.”

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All Armstrong said, on his THE MOVE podcast, was “He’s going to win this Tour, isn’t he? His fifth. And after the finish, we’re all going to hear—including ourselves—that Tadej Pogacar has tied the all-time record for Tour victories and joined that exclusive club of five.

“Well, guess what? He doesn’t believe that. He doesn’t believe that at all. He knows damn well what the real record is.”

The 54-year-old was naturally referring to his seven consecutive titles between 1999 and 2005 that were stripped after an investigation into doping allegations. The American later issued a partial confession and admitted to the violations in 2013. His latest comments, though, have sparked a debate. And it comes after Pogacar won the 10th stage of the Tour de France, extending his overall lead.

The Slovenian and Danish cyclist Jonas Vingegaard have locked horns over the last half-decade, trading blows with the Tour de France as their playground. Together, they’ve won all six titles since 2020, with Pogacar winning four of those, including two back-to-back titles (2020-2021 and 2024-2025). Now, the Slovenian has a 3:36 lead over the Dane with 11 stages left. 

It is the largest lead he has ever held at this stage of the race, prompting many within the community to compare him with cycling greats of the past. If he does indeed win the 2026 Tour de France, his third in a row, Tadej Pogacar will join legendary company. He’ll become one of only five men to have ever won the Tour five times.

The current four are Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Induráin. However, all four did it on the other side of the millennium, with the closest since being Chris Froome, who won four between 2013 and 2017. Even then, not all the comments have been good.

In light of fans’ accusations that he was doping, the 27-year-old was booed as he crossed the line at Le Lioran. Pogacar took it well, though, and even admitted that the booing fuelled him.

“I have haters and haters gonna hate,” Pogacar said afterwards (via The Guardian). “To all the booers who are there, they just give more boost to my teammates. They put wood on the fire.”

“I always think about Novak Djokovic and the great mentality he has because he has had one of the toughest careers [with] getting boos and unnecessary hate because he is the greatest. I always look up to him when someone is booing, and think about him.”

If, or rather when, Tadej Pogacar wins a fifth Tour, the record books will celebrate him regardless of Armstrong’s opinion. The debate over what truly counts, however, is unlikely to disappear.