A crash nearly took his race apart before it could unfold, but the Slovenian got his fourth Monument with a bit of luck and a tactical masterclass. We break it down.
When Tadej Pogačar withstood Tom Pidcock’s sprint on the Via Roma to win Milan-San Remo, it marked an almost improbable victory in some respects. While an odds-on favorite for the race, Pogačar had to overcome multiple obstacles to get his fourth different Monument: the race’s exhausting distance and lack of real terrain difficulty, a crash that came at nearly the worst moment, and two wily competitors who joined him in his late-race move.
But even with the crash, Pogačar’s win at San Remo is a tale of a rider who obsessively prepared for the race and put on a tactical masterclass in how to win arguably the sport’s most unpredictable one-day event. Here’s how he got it done.
Things come apart
Whatever were UAE’s original tactical plans, they certainly didn’t include seeing the team leader on the ground in the crucial run-in to the Cipressa. A fast, sweeping corner causes a pinch in the pack and in a momentary touch of wheels, Pogačar goes down, along with other prominent riders like NSN’s Biniam Girmay and the Visma-Lease a Bike duo of Wout van Aert and Matteo Jorgenson.
It’s not the absolute worst-timed spot to crash, but it’s not far off. The crash illustrates the knife-edge fulcrum of luck in races like Milan-San Remo. If Pog suffers anything worse than road rash here, or if he needs a spare bike, it’s likely none of what follows actually happens, and he goes home empty-handed for a sixth time. Instead, he pops up and quickly remounts.
A devoted team deals him back in
UAE often catches a lot of flak for being a tactically dysfunctional team. The knock on the team is that Pogačar’s superlative physical talents basically flatten most races into pure fitness contests, and then without him they sometimes stuff it up in jaw-droppingly memorable ways, like last year’s Giro d’Italia.
But credit where it’s due: the moment Pogačar hits the ground, the team improvises quite well. Florian Vermeersch and Felix Großschartner do MVP-level amounts of work to get their leader back to the back of the field at the start of the Cipressa, while Isaac del Toro alertly patrols the front to make sure no one tries to take advantage of the team in a moment of weakness.
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