Ripping up the script is the Tadej Pogacar way, and on Sunday the Slovene’s unique approach to bike racing won him the world road race championship in Zurich, thanks to an audacious, borderline foolhardy attack 100km from the finish.
Finishing solo, just 33 seconds ahead of the Australian Ben O’Connor, Pogacar joined Eddy Merckx and Stephen Roche, the only others to have secured the toughest prize in men’s cycling, the “triple crown” of Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and world road title in the same season.
That gave a new tenor to a perfect season for Pogacar, who has crossed the line first 23 times in a display of domination reminiscent of Merckx, taking six stages in each of the Giro and Tour – becoming the first man to take the “double” since Marco Pantani in 1998 – in addition to the classics Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Strade Bianche and GP Montreal as well as the Tour of Catalonia.
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“I had put a lot of pressure on myself for today,” he said. “Fighting for the Tour de France, I had never had the world championship as a clear goal, but this year after the perfect season it was a clear goal. We had a plan to keep the race under control, but … there was a dangerous breakaway, and perhaps I did a stupid attack, but luckily Jan [Tratnik] was there with me. I don’t know what I was thinking, I went with the flow. Luckily I made it but it was tough.”
With almost constant climbing and descending on the circuit around the Swiss city, there was an obvious limit to what team tactics could accomplish, and although Pogacar’s plan was to wait for the final 30km he sensed that the title might be slipping away from him with just under half the 273.9km race remaining, when a strong, substantial lead group including Great Britain’s Stephen Williams had gained around three minutes.
The small Slovene team was put to work, setting up a coruscating attack from their leader on the 17% slopes of the Bergstrasse climb with just under four laps of the 27km circuit to race. The other big favourites, the defending champion Mathieu van der Poel and the double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel, were caught napping – although it should have been blindingly obvious that Pogacar was about to make his move – and within 10 mainly uphill kilometres “Pogi” had the leaders in sight. That was thanks in part to his fellow Slovenian Tratnik, who dropped back from the lead group to pull Pogacar to the front.
A second acceleration on the Bergstrasse saw off all the erstwhile leaders except the Frenchman Pavel Sivakov, and although Evenepoel’s Belgian team chased hard a minute behind, Pogacar was in the driving seat as one by one the Belgians cracked due to the toughness of the circuit, and Evenepoel grew visibly frustrated with the other riders in the rapidly shrinking main group. On the penultimate lap, Sivakov gave best, leaving Pogacar with 51km to survive on his own to the finish with barely a minute in hand.
The pursuit initially came from the Latvian Toms Skujins and Ireland’s Ben Healy, but they made little impact, and it was not until the final lap when Van der Poel and Evenepoel finally forced a small group clear that any substantial inroads were made into Pogacar’s lead. Heading over the final long climb the race hung in the balance, with the lead shrinking to around 40 seconds, but with 10km remaining the Slovene appeared to find fresh strength, and by the final run-in to the finish the chasers clearly had their minds on the silver medal.
