Tadej Pogacar added the Tour of Lombardy to his already impressive list of successes in 2024 on Saturday. The Slovenian became the second rider in history to win the “Classic of Dead Leaves” four years in a row after Italian legend Fausto Coppi . ‘Il Campionissimo’ still holds the record for victories in Lombardy, with five successes in all (1946, 1947, 1948, 1949 and 1954).
Pogacar takes advantage of this victory to write a new page in the history of cycling. The 26-year-old UAE Team Emirates rider has 25 victories this year, including, in particular, the Tour of Italy, the Tour de France, the Liège-Bastogne-Liège World Road Race and, therefore, the Tour of Lombardy. That is to say two Grand Tours, the world title and two Monuments. The Giro-Tour-World Championship hat-trick the same year had only been achieved by two men before him: Eddy Merckx (1974) and the Irishman Stephen Roche (1987). On the other hand, Pogacar was already the first to have added a Monument to this “triple crown”. He now raises the bar a little higher with a second Monument in the summary of his exceptional year.
By winning two Grand Tours and two Monuments in the same year, Pogacar equaled the performances achieved by Coppi (1949) and Merckx (1972 and 1973).
In addition to his four successes at the Tour of Lombardy, Pogacar also has two victories on Liège-Bastogne-Liège and one on the Tour of Flanders. With seven Monuments to his credit, he once again becomes the most successful active rider in the most important classics of the season, ahead of Mathieu van der Poel. He joins the Italian Gino Bartali, Tom Boonen and the Swiss Fabian Cancellara in seventh place among the riders with the most success in Monuments.
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