Tadej Pogacar attacked 48.5 km from the finish to win his 25th soloe victory in 2024, his second in a Monument this year after Liège-Bastogne-Liège, with more than three minutes ahead of the Belgian Remco Evenepoel. Only one rider, the Italian sprinter Alessandro Pettacci, had won as many races in a season in the 21ste century, in 2005.
« Every victory is special, the team worked so hard, we had a lot of pressure. We followed the planned plan, I am very happy “, reacted Pogacar, admitting to having “ started thinking about vacation » in the last kilometers.
As expected – and feared by the entire peloton – the world champion, molded into white bib shorts and very acclaimed at the start in Bergamo, placed his attack in the difficult Sormano pass after a last big stint from his French teammate at UAE , Pavel Sivakov.
The 26-year-old Slovenian has won nine of the 11 events he started in 2024, adding 16 stage victories.
He accelerated just as the group of favorites caught up with the last survivors of the morning breakaway, with around twenty riders. Barely started, the show was already over. Arrivederci and curtain.
In a scene seen and seen again in recent months, no one even tried to follow the Slovenian, who quickly built up a significant advantage, reaching the top with more than a minute ahead of his first pursuers.
A raid worthy of Merckx
Pogacar further increased his lead in the last forty kilometers to win the 7e Monument of his career, with 3’16 ahead of Evenepoel, whose first podium in Lombardy, and 4’31 over the Italian Guilio Ciccone.
Pavel Sivakov, despite the hard work done for his leader, kept enough juice to take a Nice 6e place while David Gaudu finished 9e and second French.
With this new triumph in the “classic of dead leaves”, which allows him to match the performance accomplished by the “Campionissimo” Fausto Coppi between 1946 and 1949, Pogacar concludes in majesty one of the greatest seasons in history.
The Slovenian is the only rider to have won the Tour, the Giro, the Worlds and at least one Monument in the same year, an appellation bringing together the five greatest classics on the calendar (Milan-Sanremo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Liège- Bastogne-Liège and the Tour of Lombardy).
This raid is only comparable to those carried out in his best years by the “cannibal” Eddy Merckx.
Resigned competition
The Slovenian ogre built most of his successes thanks to long, devastating solo raids, completing the last 81 kilometers of the Strade Bianche alone or attacking 100 km from the finish at the Worlds in Zurich.
Its supremacy inevitably arouses suspicion in a sport long plagued by doping. Assures him that these practices belong to another time and believes that current cycling is “ victim of his past » as he repeated again on Friday.
His domination also causes, like the lone riders of Max Verstappen last year in Formula 1, a certain boredom and weariness within the peloton.
At the start on Saturday in Bergamo, under a beautiful autumn sun, the competition appeared resigned and fatalistic, like Matteo Jorgenson, winner of Paris-Nice in March, who confided that “ non “, he did not think ” not able to win » in Como facing the « best runner in the world, by far ».
« 99% of teams think Pogacar will win, so do we », added David Gaudu, recounting how he was overtaken on Thursday during the reconnaissance of the course by the UAE team and Pogacar in the Sormano pass to already foreshadow what was going to happen two days later.
In reality, everyone knew where, when and how it was going to happen and no one was able to derail the anticipated scenario of Pogacar’s implacable superiority.
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