Another weekend, another dominant victory for Tadej Pogačar. The previous weekend it had been the World Championships, now, clad in his renewed rainbow bands, the Slovenian stormed to the win in the road race at the European Championships.
There are almost 6,000km between Kigali, Rwanda, where the first triumph happened, and Valence, France where the latest conquest took place, but it was much the same. At the Worlds, Pogačar had attacked at 104km to go and was alone from 66km; at the Euros, he went alone with 75km to go. This is cycling by numbers stuff. Pogačar attacks, and the best riders in the world can't catch him.
It helped the déjà vu nature of Sunday that Remco Evenepoel of Belgium finished second once again, clearly the next best thing, but quite clearly next best, not best. That only belongs to Pogačar. When he attacked on the third ascent of the Côte de Saint Romain de Lerps, that was game over, no matter the fact there was still almost two hours of racing to go.
Solo victories are seemingly more common than ever in men’s cycling, and Pogačar is an expert at them. Across his career, the Slovenian has had 17 victories where he has gone alone from over 20km out. When there is a incohesive group chasing a solo attacker, especially when that man is one of the best time triallists in the world, things favour the rider in front. Evenepoel, with France's Paul Seixas, Spain's Juan Ayuso and Italy's Christian Scaroni chasing, just couldn't bring the gap down. Seixas finished third, an impressive result for a 19-year-old.
"I find myself in the front and I tried to keep a good gap around one minute. It was a comfortable gap. I don't think it was super dominant," Pogačar said post-race. "Remco was chasing me and I couldn't give up until the finish line. I had to push really, really hard. I'm happy it's over and another title."
He continued: "Obviously we knew that the race would be the hardest on the third climb. They started to attack on the second time and we started to lose some teammates. Domen [Novak] and Matevz [Govekar] were still going really strong to keep everything together.
"On the third lap I saw there was four or five Belgians and I was alone, so it was better to be on the attack than together with too many guys who can attack you, so I tried and I succeeded."
This race had been billed as the big match-up between Evenepoel, Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard of Denmark, a rare opportunity to see the Grand Tour big three in action against each other in a one-day race. However, Vingegaard was one of the 80 riders who were unable to finish the attritional circuit race in the Ardèche. Evenepoel tried to match the world champion, but couldn't keep up.
"It was the first time I could follow his attack for so long, and I didn't get blown away, so that was positive," Evenepoel told Het Nieuwsblad. "But if I want to beat him in the future, I have to work on this kind of effort. Going really hard for those three to five minutes on a climb."
"How can I improve on that? Luckily, I'm changing teams, and it's up to my new coach to fix that," he continued. "I worked on it this summer, and in recent weeks and months, I feel like I'm getting better. It's important to train for that this winter as well. I think the wattage data from this race will be very interesting for my coach to analyse. He'll then have to decide what kind of training I should do. Because if I want to beat Pogačar in the future, I have to improve."
This is just normal now – Pogačar can and will attack from far out and power to victory. The shock that came with solo forays of old has faded as we become used to the Slovenian's powers. It's just what he does. Next up is Il Lombardia on Saturday, and who would bet against Pogačar winning that? Not me.
