Tadej Pogacar is aiming to cap an astonishing year by matching cycling great Fausto Coppi’s record of four straight victories at Il Lombardia, the last “Monument” race of the season.
Slovene superstar Pogacar wrote himself into the history books last month when he was crowned world champion for the first time.
That triumph in Zurich made him just the third man to win the rainbow jersey, the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia in the same year, matching Stephen Roche and Eddy Merckx.
Now Pogacar is preparing to match Coppi’s quadruple between 1946 and 1949 at the Race of the Falling Leaves in northern Italy, the end of season special which he has won in increasingly spectacular style with each passing year.
“It’s been the perfect season for us this year. All the team worked really hard and things really clicked for us,” said Pogacar ahead of the one-day classic.
“I’ll definitely look back on this year as a really special time. But it’s not over yet and we want to finish it off well and with a strong result in my last race of the season in Lombardia.”
Pogacar claimed last year’s edition with a trademark solo attack, a 32km burst to Bergamo which he has since made look puny in a remarkable campaign.
The 26-year-old began his season in Italy eight months ago by storming to the Strade Bianche with an 81km charge and topped that by nearly 20km on his way to glory in Switzerland less than a fortnight ago.
Between those two wins, Pogacar claimed a second Liege-Bastogne-Liege and six stages in each of his victories at the Tour and Giro, triumphs which have made him the heir to not just the likes of Coppi but Merckx himself.
– Evenepoel threat? –
And Pogacar has a stellar cast of UAE teammates alongside him for this year’s punishing 252-kilometre run between Bergamo and Como which features 4,800 metres of hard climbing.
Adam Yates and Rafal Majka, who have both been on the podium at Il Lombardia, are in his six-man support squad for Saturday’s race, which shouldn’t be hampered by the apocalyptic weather which caused last weekend’s Tre Valli Varesine to be abandoned.
The only rider in the peloton who seems capable of denying Pogacar is double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel, who will return to the site of his horror crash from four years ago.
Belgian Evenepoel suffered a fractured pelvis after crashing over a low wall at the Muro di Sormano and falling nine metres (30 feet), an injury which keep him out of action until the following year’s Giro d’Italia.
The 24-year-old has had a superb season of his own, with Paris Olympic golds in the race road and time trial and a successful defence of his world time trial title last month, as a well as an impressive podium finish at the Tour.
“He looks good and very motivated,” Soudal-Quick Step team manager Davide Bramati told the Gazzetta dello Sport.
“He could have just stayed at home after the worlds given everything that he’s won this year, but he’s got a lot of determination and he wants to give to it a go.”
However, he dropped out of last weekend’s Giro dell’Emilia — inevitably won by Pogacar — with an eye problem and a low placing at the Coppa Bernocchi warm-up race on Monday suggests that he might not be in the right form to stop his rival from adding another major win to a long-and-still-growing list.
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