2026 Strade Bianche • Siena to Siena • 201km
SIENA, Italy (March 7, 2026) — Tadej Pogačar attacked with 78.5 kilometers still to race and rode alone through the Tuscan dust for nearly two hours to claim a record-breaking fourth Strade Bianche title. It was the 109th victory of his professional career. The Slovenian world champion, making his 2026 season debut, surpassed Fabian Cancellara’s all-time mark of three victories and confirmed, once again, that the white roads of Siena remain his personal playground.
No rider had ever won the race three years running. Pogačar has now won every edition he has entered since 2022—four in a row, the 2023 race the only one he skipped—and is the only reigning world champion to win Strade Bianche, having done so in consecutive years. Since 2020, he has won the first race or overall classification of every season he has contested. The pattern holds the force of natural law.
Behind him, a teenager announced himself on the biggest stage. Nineteen-year-old Paul Seixas of Decathlon CMA CGM finished second, one minute down, the best result of his young career, while Pogačar’s UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammate Isaac del Toro completed the podium in third at 1’09”. At 19 years, 5 months, and 11 days, Seixas shattered the record for the youngest rider on the Strade Bianche podium—a mark previously held by Moreno Moser, who won in 2013 at 22 years and 2 months. He is the fourth Frenchman to stand on the podium, following Romain Bardet (2nd, 2018), Julian Alaphilippe (1st, 2019; 2nd, 2021), and Valentin Madouas (2nd, 2023). Del Toro, meanwhile, became the first Mexican on the Strade Bianche podium and the first non-European since Egan Bernal finished third in 2021.
In a race that has increasingly favored pure climbers over the cobbled classics men, the youth of the podium—Seixas at 19, del Toro at 22, fourth-place finisher Romain Grégoire at 23—hinted at the shape of a rivalry still taking form. Their combined average age of 23 years and 28 days set a new record, beating the 2018 podium of Tiesj Benoot, Bardet, and Wout van Aert by nearly a year and a half. The future arrived in Siena. It just wasn’t fast enough to beat the present.
A Familiar Script, Written Early
The 20th edition of Strade Bianche unfolded under dry skies and mild temperatures, the spring sunshine baking the gravel sectors into their fast, firm, dusty form rather than the thick Tuscan clay that clings to wheels and breaks chains in wetter years. The light was golden and flat across the Val d’Arbia, the kind of afternoon that makes Tuscany look like a painting even when the peloton is tearing it apart. Organizers had shortened the course and trimmed the number of gravel sectors to fourteen, hoping to tighten the race and deny Pogačar the attritional distance that had served his previous demolitions. It did not matter.
Pogačar would later admit to the nerves that accompany any season opener. “Every year, it’s the same,” he said. “I feel a bit nervous before the first race but it’s a super nice feeling to restart, especially with Strade Bianche.” Whatever anxiety he carried was invisible on the road. His UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad rode the first three hours with the quiet authority of men executing a plan they had rehearsed until it bored them.
A nine-rider breakaway featuring Tibor Del Grosso, Jack Haig, Patrick Konrad, and Tim Rex established itself around 160 kilometers to go and built a lead of nearly two minutes with UAE content to patrol the peloton behind. The real racing, everyone understood, waited on the Monte Sante Marie. For Pogačar, the break was scenery.
When the break’s advantage collapsed to twenty seconds under the pressure of the UAE-led peloton, the catch came just as the field swung onto the famed gravel climb. Florian Vermeersch led first, Pogačar glued to his wheel. Then the world champion moved to the front on a downhill section of gravel and accelerated. The field shattered.
About ten riders initially held contact—del Toro, Seixas, Tom Pidcock, Matteo Jorgenson, Grégoire, and Jan Christen among them—but Pidcock suffered a mechanical, a slipped chain at the worst possible moment on the sterrato. The disruption forced him to expend energy just as the race was splitting, and the rhythm he lost never fully returned. He would later downplay it with the careful honesty of a man who knows the result wouldn’t have changed. “Some mechanical issue on Santa Maria and that really killed my momentum there,” he said, “but I wouldn’t have been easy with Tadej anyway. I don’t think it changed the race much apart from taking a bit more out of me.”
And when Pogačar stamped again, harder, only Seixas could respond. The French teenager rode his way back onto the Slovenian’s wheel in a moment of audacious defiance—a move that took nerve, power, and the kind of ignorance about consequences that only a 19-year-old possesses. It earned him nothing but delayed punishment.
Seixas would later describe the sequence with a teenager’s bluntness: “It was a bit strange when Pogačar attacked. I tried to follow Pidcock and del Toro tried to block me, not once or twice but three times. I was stuck and that’s the game they chose to play so I had to try and bridge the gap. But just a twenty-meter gap to Pogačar is too much. I’ve been very close but there were five hundred meters of climbing too much for me. I could see he was managing his effort. He looked back and just didn’t want to have me on his wheel.”
Pogačar surged a third time, and Seixas cracked, falling twenty seconds behind, then forty-five, then a minute. The winner explained his calculus afterward. “I knew before the start that Paul Seixas was a serious opponent,” he said. “After I attacked, I looked back at one point after the steepest section—he wasn’t that far, so I thought, ‘OK, I need to really give it all.’ I’m glad I succeeded to drop him rather than having to ride together with him.”
With 78 kilometers still to ride, Pogačar set off alone at the front of the race. It is a distance that would break most riders just to contemplate. Pogačar treats it as a commute.
The Long Road Home
Del Toro caught Seixas on the road and sat on his wheel, refusing to take a pull—textbook team tactics with his leader up the road. It left Seixas to choose between chasing alone and waiting for the group behind. The Frenchman, wisely, chose to wait. A quintet formed: Seixas, del Toro, Jorgenson, Pidcock, and Christen, along with Grégoire and others who bridged across. They organized a chase.
For a time, it worked. Pogačar’s lead, which peaked at 1:50, began to shrink. It dropped to 1:35, then 1:20. The chasers, driven by Seixas and Pidcock with Jorgenson contributing, dared to believe. Gianni Vermeersch and Grégoire bridged up to add fresh legs. But del Toro and Christen—both UAE riders—sat in like passengers on a train, consuming no energy, contributing nothing. It was infuriating and correct.
Pidcock, still feeling the cost of his mechanical, kept working, but the earlier disruption had drawn down his reserves. The gap hovered around the one-and-a-half-minute mark, close enough to hurt, far enough to mock. “It’s so difficult when you’re in the group behind and you know the race is gone,” he said. “You can always think, this is just the race now, but yeah, it’s not really how it is when one guy’s in front.”
Then the road tilted upward again, and Pogačar found his rhythm. On the Montechiaro gravel sector, and then Colle Pinzuto—the stretch renamed in his honor after previous exploits—the gap stabilized and began to grow. He rode with the metronomic consistency of a man who had done the arithmetic in his head and found the answer satisfactory. By fifteen kilometers to race, the lead held at 1:20. The chase died. It had never really lived.
Seixas, who had spent himself driving the pursuit, found one final burst of acceleration on the approach to Siena. He attacked del Toro, dropped him, and rode into the Piazza del Campo alone for second place. “For the podium, I managed to get him out of my wheel,” he said afterward. “It was really unbelievable.” It was a remarkable ride from a rider still too young to vote in most countries. Del Toro held on for third, his highest World Tour classic finish, a reward for disciplined teamwork. Grégoire attacked the remnants of the chase group to take fourth, followed by Vermeersch and Christen.
The Dust Settles
Pogačar entered Siena alone, sweeping past the Duomo and down the narrow streets, the roar of the crowd funneled between the medieval walls. He did not sprint up Via Santa Caterina. He did not need to. He slowed, smiled, and soaked in the noise, crossing the line with the leisure of a man collecting something he already owned. The average speed of 42.699 kph was a new race record, up from 40.705 kph the previous year—a measure of how fast the dry roads ran, and how relentlessly UAE had set the tempo from the gun.
Speaking seconds after the finish, Pogačar paid tribute to his teammates. “Chapeau to the team today,” he said. “They’ve done an incredible job from the start, controlling the breakaway and setting up a great pace. It was beautiful to see all the guys from the team performing so well. I’ve seen Paul Seixas chasing really hard on the steepest part of the climb when I attacked on Monte Sante Marie. I said to myself, ‘Go all out to the top then I’ll see either he’ll come to my wheel or he’ll explode.’ Then I saw the gap was enough and Isaac and Jan were there. It helped a lot to go alone. It’s a great start of the season. I’ll take the rest of the year race by race and we’ll see if it goes as well as last year.”
Later, in the press conference, he was asked whether any of his four Strade Bianche victories stood apart. “There isn’t one that stands out,” he said. “They’re all unique.” He addressed the obvious question about the solo distance with a shrug. “Reality is that I don’t like long breakaways. It’s just because the best place to make a difference is now with eighty kilometers to go. It used to be with fifty, but we have no reason to complain, especially after winning.” He paused. “Sometimes I had personal thoughts too.” He did not elaborate.
Four Strade Bianche titles now, added to a palmarès that includes four Il Lombardia wins, three Liège-Bastogne-Liège victories, and two Tours of Flanders. His dominance of the Monument and one-day calendar continues to grow in ways that resist comparison to any single predecessor. There is no historical template for what he is doing. He is writing the template.
Pidcock, the only other man to win Strade Bianche in the past four years, finished seventh after his mechanical cost him a realistic shot at following Pogačar’s wheel in the crucial moment. The effort of the earlier phases eventually told in the final kilometers. “I think that was a pretty big gap when people are thinking about the final,” he said, “and yeah, I ran out of legs in the final as well.” Despite the setbacks, his performance on the gravel sectors confirmed Pinarello Q36.5’s competitive condition heading into the spring. Jorgenson took eighth. Wout van Aert, a former winner who admitted before the race that he carried more question marks than confidence, finished tenth after spending much of the second half in a chase group that never found the legs to rejoin the front.
Ben Healy, who animated the middle portion of the race with a string of aggressive attacks, eventually paid the price for his efforts and faded. It was a more unfortunate day for Pidcock’s teammate Quinten Hermans, who abandoned after a crash earlier in the event. Initial reports indicated no serious injuries, but the incident ended any chance of contributing to the finale.
In the press conference, Seixas could barely contain himself. “This is the best result I could get today,” he said. “Tadej Pogačar racing the same way he did in 2024 and 2025—he’s one step ahead of the others. I’m really happy to be second. It’s just insane to be here.” He is 19 years old. The insanity, one suspects, has barely begun.
Del Toro, who played the team role to perfection, kept his focus on the collective result but allowed himself one dream. “It’s so nice to get the victory with the team,” he said. “I was supposed to be a little bit in front of Tadej but he decided to go early. Paul Seixas was very impressive. He showed before that he’s at a super high level. I’m super happy to race against guys like him. Hopefully one day in my career, I’ll win Strade Bianche. I really like this place where I took the Maglia Rosa at the Giro d’Italia last year.”
The conversation afterward centered not on whether Pogačar could be beaten, but on when. The youth of the riders filling the places behind him—Seixas, del Toro, Grégoire—suggested the answer might eventually come, but not yet. As long as Pogačar starts a race on these roads, the white dust of Tuscany settles in the same pattern: first across the line, alone, the gap yawning behind him like a geological fact.
His next appointment: Milan-Sanremo, in two weeks. A race, he has acknowledged, that he finds much harder to win.
Results
| Pos | Rider | Nat | Team | Time |
| 1 | Tadej Pogačar | SLO | UAE Team Emirates-XRG | 4h 45’ 15” |
| 2 | Paul Seixas | FRA | Decathlon CMA CGM Team | + 1’ 00” |
| 3 | Isaac del Toro | MEX | UAE Team Emirates-XRG | + 1’ 09” |
| 4 | Romain Grégoire | FRA | Groupama-FDJ United | + 2’ 04” |
| 5 | Gianni Vermeersch | BEL | Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe | + 2’ 04” |
| 6 | Jan Christen | SUI | UAE Team Emirates-XRG | + 2’ 07” |
| 7 | Tom Pidcock | GBR | Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team | + 2’ 14” |
| 8 | Matteo Jorgenson | USA | Team Visma | Lease a Bike | + 2’ 20” |
| 9 | Andreas Kron | DEN | Uno-X Mobility | + 3’ 46” |
| 10 | Wout van Aert | BEL | Team Visma | Lease a Bike | + 3’ 46” |
Strade Bianche, Siena–Siena, 201km, 14 gravel sectors (64km). Dry, mild conditions.
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