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 history.
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’ is the only one to have won the race four years in a row, at the end of the 1940s.
That ‘Pogi’ is the big favorite is obvious. 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
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.
Unprecedented journey
At the Tour of Lombardy, on a new but still very difficult route, 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.
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