A final demonstration for the road? The Tour of Lombardy, the final Monument of the season, offers Tadej Pogacar the opportunity on Saturday to complete one of the greatest seasons in the history of cycling.
On the banks of Lake Como, where the 118th edition of the “dead leaves classic” will take place, the Slovenian, three-time outgoing winner, can write a new chapter in his book “In pursuit of the greatest” by equaling Fausto Coppi , the “Campionissimo”, the only one to have won the race four years in a row, at the end of the 1940s.
That he is the overwhelming favorite makes sense.
Because he feels that “the legs are still very good” at the start of the most mountainous of the five Monuments, while his rivals like Remco Evenepoel start to ride on the rim and that Primoz Roglic, Jonas Vingegaard, Mathieu van der Poel or Julian Alaphilippe are already on vacation.
But above all because it has changed dimension again in 2024 to reach a stratospheric level allowing it to sign one of the greatest seasons of all time.
– A frightening assessment –
He started the year by winning the Strade Bianche on a solo raid of 81 kilometers. Followed up with a victory at the Tour of Catalonia with four stages to boot. Won Liège-Bastogne-Liège, then achieved a Giro-Tour de France double, unseen since 1998, winning six stages each time along the way. Won the Montreal Grand Prix, the World Championships by attacking 100 km from the finish and finally the Tour of Emilia after another fantastic ride, his house specialty.
In the end, the results are simply frightening: he competed in ten events in 2024 and won eight of them, for 24 successes in total, counting the stages. The best total over a year since Italian sprinter Alessandro Petacchi in 2005.
He was beaten only by Jasper Philipsen at Milan-Sanremo (3rd), Michael Matthews at the Quebec GP, where his seventh place is his worst result of the year, and… the rain on Tuesday at Trois Vallées varésines during a race stopped by bad weather.
We have to go back a long way, probably to the great vintages of Eddy Merckx in the 1970s, to find such a cannibalistic and complete season.
The Slovenian is already the first rider in the history of cycling to have won the Giro, the Tour, the Worlds and at least one Monument in the same year.
The great Eddy himself bowed after the Worlds by declaring that Pogacar was now “above”, even if he then qualified his remarks by specifying that they only related to the lone rider of the Slovenian of 26 years in Zurich.
Speaking to the press on Friday, Pogacar said he was “flattered” to be compared to Merckx. “But we’re talking about another era about which I know almost nothing. I will never compare myself to anyone. I just want to be the best of the moment,” he added.
– Lassitude –
The peloton is starting to admit its weariness.
“Everyone feels a certain amount of fatigue. Seriously? Again?”, sighed the American Larry Warbasse this week on the podcast “The Cycling Podcast”.
“When he started to win, everyone said to themselves: we have to anticipate. But now he anticipates anticipations. He won the race before anyone could try anything,” added the Decathlon team runner. -AG2R who says he believes in the integrity of the Slovenian, sometimes doubted given his domination in a sport long plagued by doping.
“Obviously there will always be people who will look for darker explanations, especially in cycling. But I think he is just the most gifted among us.”
“Cycling is a victim of its past. There is no confidence and I don’t know what we can do to regain it,” Pogacar commented on Friday, repeating that he found it “stupid” to put his ” health at stake for ten years of career”.
At the Tour of Lombardy, on a new route, slightly modified on Friday due to the rains of recent days but still very difficult, everyone is expecting a new recital from the Slovenian. The main – if not the only – question seems to relate to the precise location between Bergamo and Como where he will place his acceleration.
The Sormano pass (12.9 km at 6.4%) flashes red on all radars. We will then be a little less than fifty kilometers from the finish. A distance that has become commonplace for Pogacar 2024.
jk/alh
