Tadej Pogacar in Coppi compliant and chloroform – Disclaimer

2024-10-12 15:05:00

Like his Italian predecessor in the 1940s, UAE leader Team Emirates won his fourth consecutive Fallen Classic, ending a full season and a certain idea of ​​suspense in cycling.

To find out how the Giro di Lombardia would take place this Saturday 12 October, all you had to do was open the morning sports newspapers to the cycling page. Or consult specialized sites for three weeks, the moment Tadej Pogacar won the world champion jersey in Zurich. The Slovenian had no choice but to win the Lombard event, the last monument of the season, to complete an entire year. A formality, given that he had already won it three years earlier. And as it was written, so it was: the UAE Team Emirates rider won the Dead Leaves Classic today for the fourth time in a row. A feat achieved only once before him, by Italian cycling legend Fausto Coppi, between 1946 and 1949.

To know how Tadej Pogacar would have fared in this case too, all you had to do was read the press, or have watched most of the races he has participated in since the start of the season. The Slovenian would have used the Colma di Sormano, the penultimate difficulty of the day, as a springboard to isolate himself from ordinary mortals and travel about 50 miles alone. The only suspense perhaps lay there: exactly how many kilometers from the finish line would Pogacar open the throttle? 48.5, therefore. The other numerical question: what gap would it leave to the first pursuer? More than three minutes on Remco Evenepoel, the Belgian with a special past in Lombardy, who never managed to make up time, not even on the flat. The Italian Giulio Ciccone completes the podium in Como.

Impressive, disturbing, boring

By winning in Lombardy with the rainbow jersey, Tadej Pogacar concluded an unreal year. Victory at the Tour de France (his third), victory at the Giro d’Italia (his first), victory at Liège-Bastogne-Liège (his second), victory at the world championships… This year it is easier to count the races in which Pogacar took part and which he did not win: the Milan-San Remo, the Grand Prix de Québec and the Trois Vallées Varésines. Although the latter, it is because the downpours that poured over Italy caused the race to be suspended. Another way to place Pogacar is to note that he scored more than 12,000 points in the International Cycling Union standings in 2024. Alone, more than entire teams of 30 riders. Impressive, no doubt. Worrying, perhaps. Boring, certainly.