You may be tired – the peloton seems to be – but Tadej Pogačar is not. Just six days after a triumphant World Championships, the 26-year-old soloed to victory at the Giro dell’Emilia, in doing so joining another of those “elite clubs” we can’t help but talk about.
Full disclosure: we may be nearing the base of the barrel now; it’s quite hard to whip up a dramatic, compelling and entertaining post-race story about Pogačar’s dominant multi-coloured exploit when he just keeps doing the same damn thing. Attack early and solo to the finish like the versatile, history-making, Giro-Tour-Worlds winner that he is.
It becomes harder still when the race that provided the stage for his latest demonstration was almost literally unwatchable. Indeed, the women’s race earlier in the day went completely without broadcast due to the weather, though somehow the men’s race got away with it, though the coverage was incredibly patchy.
I’ll run it down for you: Pogačar attacked on the first of five ascents of Bologna’s San Luca climb (2.1 km at 9.4%), and that was that. By the finish a little over 37 km later, the 26-year-old’s waterlogged rainbow jersey pierced the misty rain at the finish line almost two minutes ahead of Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers), Davide Piganzoli (Polti-Kometa) and Michael Woods (Israel-Premier Tech) who were competing for second, or First Human.
The conditions at least afforded the illusion of discomfort on Pogačar’s puffy-eyed visage, but victory was never in doubt. There were even reports of other favourites stepping off on the first passage of the finish line, which came less than a kilometre after Pogačar made his race-winning move.
He’d done it. Again. Solo. And in the rainbow jersey – all talk of the rainbow curse thoroughly rebuffed just days after Pogačar had unpacked his new kit.
All my usual reluctance to employ adjectives such as ‘epic’, ‘heroic’, ‘extraordinary’ is put aside for only a small group of riders, and though there could very well be an argument that the new world champion has crossed the line into ‘formulaic’, ‘clinical’, ‘boring’, Pogačar has earned any and all hyperbole throughout 2024.
It’s pretty bonkers, really. Look at this season’s results: he’s now on 24 wins (career total of 87) in 56 race days – 42 of them Grand Tour stages – and since kicking off his season with victory at Strade Bianche after 82 km solo, he’s only finished off an event’s podium on one occasion, at the recent Grand Prix Québec.
What’s more, not even a week after adding Triple Crown membership to his “elite club” portfolio, his history-making career continues as he joins the remarkably small number of (male) cyclists who have won their first race after taking the World Title.
It’s much more common in women’s cycling. Lotte Kopecky was the last to do so after taking her 2023 title (she’s technically still to race on the road after her title defence, though she contested Gravel Worlds this weekend and finished second to Marianne Vos), joining other recent members Anna van der Breggen, Annemiek van Vleuten, Lizzie Deignan, Marianne Vos, etc.
At risk of angering Belgium (see below), the last man to do so in equivalent style was Spaniard Abraham Olano whose decade-long career included stage wins at the Tour and Vuelta – all of them time trials – 12 overall victories including the 1998 Vuelta a España, and the 1995 World Championship road race in Duitama, Colombia, where he was joined on the podium by compatriot Miguel Indurain and Italy’s Marco Pantani.
Then six days later – the same elapsed time as for young Master Pogi – Olano was back home in Spain and winning the now-defunct Subida al Naranco in what was a team one-two(-four) for Mapei-GB.
Tom Boonen is also part of the same club and a more-recent signee, but the World Championship in Madrid was his last road race of 2005. He eventually paid his (late) entry after a four-month delay, starting his 2006 season with four consecutive wins at the one-day Doha International GP, then the Tour of Qatar, which he also won overall, puncturing a five-stage clean sweep with third place on stage 4.
Julian Alaphilippe is the only other current rider who came close – agonisingly close. He believed he’d nailed it at Liège-Bastogne-Liège just a week after winning his first World title in 2020, but he was memorably relegated from second to fifth due to dangerously erratic movement in the five-man sprint, salt in the wound after an early celebration allowed Primož Roglič to steal the Monument. Alaphilippe went on to win Brabantse Pijl a week later, but the damage was done.
The records get a little patchy the further back you go, but others already in the clubhouse include 1977 world champion Francesco Moser and, of course, Eddy Merckx who achieved the feat on his third (and last) attempt, winning the world title and the French one-day Critérium des As in 1974.
Does any of this matter? Not really. As we’re increasingly pointing out to ourselves, comparison is the thief of joy not particularly helpful unless appropriately framed, but the sheer fact it’s quite so rare for male pro cyclists to win as they debut the rainbow jersey is worthy of note.
And with that, it’s another charmed, almost prescient, step in a poetic year for Pogačar.
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