Always stronger: Tadej Pogacar won his first world champion title on Sunday in Zurich after an insane raid, which he himself described as “stupid”, by attacking 100 kilometers from the finish to write a little more Cycling history.
Stunned rivals
The Slovenian, who dynamited the race with a completely crazy offensive, became only the third rider after Eddy Merckx in 1974 and Stephen Roche in 1987 to win the Tour of Italy, the Tour de France and the World Championships in the same year. He won by maintaining a 34-second lead over Australian Ben O’Connor and 58 seconds over Dutchman Mathieu van der Poel, who was the defending champion, after an insane raid, discouraged by all cycling manuals.
“I said to myself: “But what are you doing? You’re shooting yourself in the foot” It wasn’t the plan, it was just stupid », he reacted after his monumental 100 km escape, one of the greatest feats in the history of his sport. “Of course I was surprised. There were 100 terminals left. Normally it’s suicidal to leave from so far away”reacted Remco Evenepoel, who was in the running for a new time-line race double after that of the 2024 Olympics and who finished fifth.
“When he left, I thought: he’s crazy”added Van der Poel. “He followed his instincts. It’s just incredible”decided Primoz Roglic. Pogacar, whose day began with an alarm failure forcing his companion Urska Zigart to drag him out of bed, first returned like an arrow to a group of breakaways where his compatriot Jan Tratnik was waiting for him. “Luckily he was there. He’s a machine, he pulled big relays” welcomed the Slovenian leader.
A steamroller
He did it again twenty miles further on, this time with the Frenchman Pavel Sivakov, his teammate for the year at UAE, as his companion. Suffering martyrdom, Sivakov accompanied his year-round leader for a lap, delighted with the windfall to the point of waiting for his “friend”, before the Frenchman collapsed in the raid on Bergstrasse.
“I tried to follow him but I clearly burned my wings. His level is incredible. I’ve never seen that, it was a steamroller.”Sivakov reported. With 51 km to go, the Slovenian set off alone to complete his incredible odyssey. Behind, Evenepoel and Van der Poel ended up reacting with a small group which included Romain Bardet for a long time, tenth and best Frenchman in the end, to get dangerously close.
But without managing to come back on the Slovenian who, without ever taking more than a minute’s lead, resisted courage until the end. “I really struggled. It was very hard because the tank was empty. I was starting to no longer see clearly, I could barely hold on to the pedals but I gritted my teeth. I had to do it”.
“A dream come true”
Because the rainbow jersey, which he will wear until the next World Championships in September 2025 in Kigali, Rwanda, represented one of the big objectives of his season. “In recent years, I have been chasing victories in the Tour, the Giro, the Tour of Flanders, without ever making the Worlds a real objective. But this year, I knew that, given the course, I had a great opportunity. It’s more than a dream come true.”.
The UAE rider must show off his new tunic in a few days during the last classics in Italy, including the Tour of Lombardy on October 12, where he has three successes in a row. The opportunity to further increase his staggering record for the season with 23 victories in 55 days of racing this year, a phenomenal ratio.
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At only 26 years old, the track record of the man who aspires to become the greatest of all time grows day by day. He now has four Grand Tours, including three times the Tour de France with 17 stages along the way, six Monuments and a world title under his belt for an already colossal total of 86 victories. “He is exceptional, stronger than ever. And it feels like this is just the beginning.”a soufflé Van der Poel.
