A Nation of Two Million, Producing the World's Strongest Riders: What Taiwan Can Learn from Pogačar's Small-Country Sports System

If you plotted “population” against “top-tier road cyclist output” on a chart, Slovenia would be the outlier wildly off the trend line.

This small Central European country has a population of about two million—fewer than Taipei City and New Taipei City combined—yet in the same generation, it produced names like Tadej Pogačar and Primož Roglič. The former claimed his fifth Tour de France overall title in 2026, becoming only the 5th rider in history to reach five wins; the latter is another Slovenian rider from the same generation competing at the highest level of Grand Tours.

Let me be honest upfront: regarding the inner workings of Slovenia’s youth development system, its funding structure, and talent selection methods, I don’t have reliable data I can cite, so this article won’t give you an answer like “their secret recipe is these three steps.” What can be confirmed is the results; and the results alone are already worth discussing.

First, Look at How Extraordinary the Results Are

Pogačar’s resume alone would be national-treasure level in any major sporting nation:

And he’s not a late bloomer: he won the Tour de l’Avenir in 2018, then at age 20 in 2019 took the overall title at the Tour of California, becoming the youngest UCI WorldTour overall winner in history. In other words, this system didn’t just “produce one genius”—it had already delivered him to the sport’s highest stage before he turned 20.

That’s what makes a small nation’s system most worth studying—not the talent, but the pipeline.

Three Structural Advantages of a Small Nation’s Sports System

The following are general structural observations, not official Slovenian claims, but they recur across many small nations’ sports development cases:

1. Talent Doesn’t Get Diluted

The problem for big countries is often not a lack of talent, but talent being scattered across dozens of sports, hundreds of clubs, and thousands of disconnected pathways. Small nations don’t have that luxury—once a sport establishes cultural status, the nation’s attention, coaching resources, and parental expectations all converge on it.

2. The Distance from Grassroots to the Top Is Short

In a country of two million, there may be only one or two degrees of separation between “a local race winner” and “the national team coach.” This means the process of discovery, selection, and sending riders abroad can move very quickly. In contrast, the layered selection systems of large countries often leave a 17-year-old talent waiting years before being noticed.

3. The Multiplier Effect of Role Models Is Especially Large

When a country produces a world champion, in a small nation this effect is amplified to the extreme—because every kid thinks, “that person lives on the same street as me.” The Slovenian Tourist Board later became one of Pogačar’s partners, which in itself shows how powerful this national-level identification is.

On Terrain, We Actually Have a Lot to Say

A common trait of European Alpine nations is: if you want to ride, the mountains are right outside your door. Climbing isn’t a training session you have to specially arrange; it’s the default setting for commuting and everyday riding. Accumulated over years, an entire generation’s endurance base, pacing instincts, and descending skills are fed for free by the terrain.

Taiwan isn’t lacking in this regard. Wuling is the sacred mountain in the hearts of Asian road cyclists; the density and difficulty of routes like Beiyi, Fengguizui, the Yangjin P-shaped road, and the Four Heavenly Kings all hold up on the international stage. The compressed terrain—less than 100 kilometers from mountains to sea—is rarely seen anywhere in the world.

So what we lack isn’t mountains.

So What Is Taiwan Missing?

Honestly, there’s no standard answer to this question, but using Slovenia’s case as a mirror, we can at least ask some concrete questions:

• Pipeline: For a 16-year-old Taiwanese kid with real climbing talent, what does the path for the next three years look like? Is there a predictable route, with mentors, that parents would feel confident letting their child take?
• Race Density: How many internationally competitive races can a young rider enter in a year? Are the opportunities to accumulate racing experience dense enough?
• Cultural Position: Cycling’s social image in Taiwan is still mainly “healthy leisure” and “manufacturing industry.” For it to become a career path taken seriously, that image has to shift first.
• Visibility: Pogačar’s results translate into an eight-figure sponsorship portfolio (media reports cite approximately €12,000,000/year, unofficial figures) because road cycling has a complete broadcast and media ecosystem in Europe. How many cycling events in Taiwan would the average person actually see on TV or streaming?

Summary

• Slovenia has a population of about two million, yet in the same generation produced top-tier riders at the level of Pogačar and Roglič
• Pogačar won a UCI WorldTour overall title at age 20, showing the system’s “pipeline” is extremely short
• A small nation’s advantages typically come from talent not being diluted, fewer selection layers, and an amplified role-model effect
• Taiwan lacks neither terrain nor industry; what it lacks is the pipeline connecting talent to the professional level, and visibility

Next time you climb Wuling, consider this: the scale of this mountain is no less than any mountain that raised European riders. The real gap was never in the gradient.

Related Reading

• Tadej Pogačar Training Philosophy Analysis: The Slovenian Genius’s Aggressive Riding Style and Scientific Preparation
• Promoting Road Cycling in Taiwan Through the Pogačar Craze: What Star Power Can Bring, and What We Still Lack
• 26 Tour de France Stage Wins: Pogačar’s Harvest Roadmap from 2020 to 2026
• La Vuelta: The Missing Piece in Pogačar’s Grand Tour Sweep—Why Hasn’t He Gone for It Yet?