Online elite world championship 2024: never anyone like Tadej
Tadej Pogacar is the new elite men’s cycling world champion. The Slovenian won the rainbow jersey at the end of a long solitary escape, ahead of the Australian Ben O’Connor, who came second at 34”, and the defending champion, the Dutchman Mathieu van der Poel, third in a restricted sprint with a delay of 58”.
The champion from Komenda has thus rewritten the Guinness book of cycling by equaling the Giro-Tour-World Championship hat-trick achieved by Eddy Merckx in 1974 and Stephen Roche in 1987. Unlike, however, the Cannibal and the friendly Irishman, Tadej can boast this season also a victory in a classic monument, the Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Even before his attempt, next Saturday 12 October, to equal the four Tours of Lombardy won consecutively by Fausto Coppi, from 1946 to 1949, it can be said that his 2024 was the greatest individual season in the history of cycling.
In the tradition of his style Nobody does it betterPogacar won today’s race, along the 273 kilometers of the route with a constant difference in altitude, in the most unpredictable way possible. 100 kilometers from the finish line, at the start of the fourth-to-last lap of the city circuit, on the steep slope of Zürichbergstrasse, the Slovenian sent his club and national teammate Domen Novak to the front of the group who set a frenetic pace that crumbled the peloton. Tadej left alone and subsequently found another teammate waiting for him along the road, Jan Tratnik, who had let himself be separated from the morning’s group of attackers. Following Tratnik, the Slovenia captain quickly returned to the group of men leading the race.
The third to last pass on the Zürichbergstrasse recorded a new sprint from Tadej who made the gap. Luckily for him, the only one to limit the damage was the Frenchman Pavel Sivakov, his teammate in the UAE Team Emirates. Despite the fact that the World Cup is a race for national teams in which club militancy should not be considered, the Franco-Russian from San Donà di Piave, awaited by Tadej who deliberately slowed down, placed himself at the complete disposal of his captain club, giving rise to an impromptu version of the Baracchi Trophy for 25 kilometres, in Zurich style, which allowed Pogacar to save precious energy.
On the sixth, and penultimate, pass on the Zürichbergstrasse, Sivakov broke away with 51,500 meters to go, leaving the Giro and Tour winner alone in the lead. The Irishman Ben Healy and the Latvian Tom Skujins came out from behind and moved within 45″ of the pace, also diligent in measuring their forces as best as possible. Arriving with over a minute’s lead at minus 22 minutes from the finish line, after the final ascent to Zürichbergstrasse, Tadej had a brief moment of crisis which allowed his pursuers, who had regrouped in the meantime, to move within 38 seconds at minus 14 seconds from the finish line. . A providential stretch of descent, which allowed him to recover his strength, combined with the inability of his opponents to make regular changes in the chase, quickly increased his lead to 50″ 10 kilometers from the final banner. Having overcome the final climb of Witikon with momentum, the 26-year-old son of Tricorno launched himself downhill towards the apotheosis of a day and a season that we are unlikely to see again in the history of cycling.
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