COMO, Italy: Tadej Pogacar won Il Lombardia for the fourth time in as many years on Saturday to equal a record streak of victories set by cycling great Fausto Coppi over seven decades ago.
World champion Pogacar capped an astonishing year in which he claimed a Tour de France and Giro d’Italia double by matching Coppi, who won five times in total, including four victories between 1946 and 1949 at the last “Monument” of the season.
Pogacar made his widely predicted move on the decisive Colma di Sormano climb, 48.5 kilometers from the end of the 255km “Race of the Falling Leaves” whose course had been modified following heavy rain and landslides in northern Italy.
After being guided through the race by his strong UAE support team Pogacar surged to his second victory in as many races since donning the rainbow jersey in Zurich a fortnight ago with a trademark solo attack.
“We planned it like this... I knew that if I had a decent gap there, I can come to the finish,” Pogacar said.
Pogacar finished over three minutes ahead of double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel who returned to the site of his horror crash from four years ago which left him with a fractured hip when he plunged into a ravine.
Local fans were cheered by Lidl-Trek’s Giulio Ciccone completing the podium, 4:31 off the pace.
The 26-year-old held his bike aloft in delight on the finish line just as he did eight months ago when he began his near-perfect season with victory at another big Italian race, the Strade Bianche.
“Like I started the season, I also finished it. Yeah, the same celebration. It’s nice to lift the bike. I hope for a nice photo,” Pogacar told reporters.
Pogacar was already the first-ever cyclist to win the triple crown of the Tour, Giro and worlds with at least one Monument victory in the same season.
And Saturday’s triumph, his 25th in 2024, gives the Slovenian star a good claim to have had the greatest ever season in the history of road cycling.
Also in Pogacar’s long list of wins this year were a second Liege-Bastogne-Liege, six stages in each of his victories at the Tour and Giro, the Tour of Catalonia, the Montreal Grand Prix and last weekend’s Giro dell’Emilia.
Those triumphs have made him the heir not just to seven-time Grand Tour champion Coppi but also Eddy Merckx, the greatest to ever sit on a bike.
No one since Merckx’s heyday of the 1970s has anyone expressed the sort of dominance Pogacar has over the rest of the field this year.
Pogacar has only been beaten twice this year, at Milan-San Remo where he finished third, while his seventh place at the Quebec Grand Prix was his worst finish of the season.
But he refused to put himself on the same level as Merckx, saying when asked if he realized the magnitude of his achievements: “Let’s see where we will be after the career.”
Pogacar’s task was made easier on Friday night by Ineos dropping Tom Pidcock who had finished second behind Pogacar at the Giro dell’Emilia.
Sensing an opportunity to maybe hold off Pogacar, an early breakaway group of 21 riders extended their lead to over four minutes heading toward the long Sella di Osigo and Madonna del Ghisallo climbs after the halfway point.
But UAE began pushing to get Pogacar in position to make his move, with less than two minutes separating the two groups come the descent back down toward the world-famous lake.
And 6.5km before the summit Pogacar charged off on his own with a timid response from his rivals, although Evenepoel desperately tried to follow him up the road.
Belgian Evenepoel went out on his own in pursuit of Pogacar on the descent but with over a minute separating the pair at the bottom the gap was too big.
Pogacar somehow looked fresher than his chasers and added even more time on Evenepoel, breezing through the final kilometers and going on a victory parade through the streets of Como.
