Once again untouchable during the Tour of Lombardy, Tadej Pogacar once again shriveled the competition, symbolized by Remco Evenepoel. But how can we explain the over-domination of Slovenian?
Tadej Pogacar flew through the Tour of Lombardy on Saturday, and the worst part of it all was that everything was absolutely planned. Before the start, the entire peloton knew that the Slovenian was going to take off on the slopes of the Sormano pass, the main difficulty of the day, and everyone was convinced that the recent world champion was going to complete a new solo raid of almost 50 kilometers. . What do you think happened?
Once again, king “Pogi” was well above the competition, and this new demonstration, as flashy as expected, stunned the Eurosport commentators during the live broadcast. “What is surprising is not that he wins, but that he is above the others with such a gap”confided Guillaume Di Grazia, around ten minutes before the finish.
Pogacar, how to explain it?
The commentator mentioned the famous “marginal gains”, popularized by Christopher Froome’s Sky and taken up by Jonas Vingegaard’s Visma, but these are supposed to provoke “tiny differences”.
Pogacar, offers him a level of performance “10 to 15% » superior to his opponents, which Di Grazia compares to a gap of one second over 100 meters in athletics, where everything is decided by hundredths.
“There, there are 2’36 on Remco Evenepoel”observes the commentator, while Philippe Gilbert feared terrible gaps (“the tenth will be 10 minutes”). The tenth will finally finish less than five minutes behind, which is already colossal, but Evenepoel, one of the strongest runners of his generation, will finish well over 3 minutes behind. A gap which had not been seen since 1971 and a victory for Eddy Merckx, the only point of comparison which still holds with this Pogacar. And again…
“We are in Merckxian proportions,
reprends Di Graziaand cycling was not as compact as today in the era of Eddy Merckx or Bernard Hinault. » The commentator then mentions the absence of the Soviets in those years, and the emergence of certain new cycling countries such as Australia, Great Britain… or Slovenia.
“Cycling has become more global, the average level is higher and this average level is exploding higher with greater differences, that’s what may seem shocking”concluded Di Grazia. « If you have an explanation…”asks the commentator, who does not openly want to go into the area of doping. “We, apart from talent…”
