The debates about Tadej Pogacar forget about his incontestable victories, because they no longer provoke them, and focus on secondary aspects, such as the color of his culottewho already in the Giro raised passions, even ridiculous threats from the UCI, with the combination of the pink of his jersey with the black or maroon of his pants. Now it is being discussed whether he is more elegant with that of his team, the UAE, in contrast to the World Champion’s tunic, or completely white. Minutiae: he wins with everything he wears, no matter how much the chromatic talk at the start was the soles of his sneakers, with the colors of the rainbow, or the gold even on the rims of Evenepoel, who was returning to his cursed race. “What do I hope to do? “Not falling off a bridge like the other time.” He remembered 2021. On the descent from Sormano, he fractured his pelvis and punctured a lung, a lesser evil after a horrifying accident.
Very close by, the trumpets of the apocalypse sound more than fifty kilometers from the finish line, and they are heard in the peloton and also in the group of 21 advanced cyclists who begin to climb Colma di Sormano, on the shores of Lake Como. They resound. At the touch of Majka, Yates and Sivakov, a Pole, an Englishman and a Frenchman, and the cyclists who follow them in a group that is falling apart, know that they are the announcement that the final judgment is near, and that Tadej Pogacar will win it ; that the fight will be for second place. “We had planned it like this because the race is so hard that in the end the last 40 kilometers are more or less man to man,” confesses the Slovenian phenomenon.
So when Yates moves aside for Sivakov to take the lead, the die is cast and all that remains is to wait for the moment, not the surprise, because it is no longer a surprise for anyone. It can reach one hundred, as in the World Cup, eighty, on the Strade Bianche, or as in Lombardy, 48.6 kilometers from the finish line, and the effects are always identical, even if the responses change. On the narrow route that cyclists travel on, none occur. There is no man-to-man duel as Pogacar expected. There are eight kilometers left to the top and no one among mortals is interested in being out of breath chasing the Slovenian crusher. At their own pace, which is better than that of the others, Remco Evenepoel and Enric Mas, with the frayed group, pretend to go hunting, which is not such. They will only see the World Champion’s rainbow jersey again on the podium in Como.
The advantage increases to the cheerful pace of Pogacar, who pedals with astonishing ease, at more than 20 kilometers per hour and developing more than 400 watts of power. The aerial images show how the distance is increasing, from one minute at the top, in the midst of the tide of fans who open like a zipper as the champion passes. “On the false plain I pushed harder to take seconds and win the mental battle,” he assured, without realizing, perhaps, that he had won that war since his lieutenants took out the trumpets to announce the apocalypse. Or for months, who knows.
He looked back from time to time, because of that tic of cyclists of not believing the advantage that is announced to them through the earpiece, but neither Mas, nor Evenepoel, nor Van Eetvelt could strictly be called pursuers, because they were not following anyone. They were simply competing in another race, that of second place, the best among those who are not Pogacar, and Remco Evenepoel was the most gifted of the little group; He chased away his fears, and as if he were rewinding part of his race, seeing it in reverse, he separated himself from his companions on the descent from Sormano, on the opposite slope to that of his fall, to reach the finish line alone, 3.16m after Pogacar. , and start crying with the emotion of having overcome their fears in Lombardy. Giulio Ciccone was third, Ion Izagirre fourth and Enric Mas, fifth, good positions when taking into account the unapproachable figure of Tadej Pogacar, his fourth consecutive victory in the autumn classic, equaling Fausto Coppi’s epic. “I’m looking forward to the holidays,” he notes. His rivals too, after a season in which he has won 22 of the 58 days in which he has competed.
