81km to go. 81km to go. Not an attack with 50km to go, as he did in 2022, but 81km to go. That’s how far Tadej Pogačar attacked from to win Strade Bianche on Saturday, an almost unbelievable distance to attack from. Two hours of riding alone, in one of the toughest professional bike races, to take the win. In his first race of 2024, to boot. This isn’t how cycling is supposed to happen, surely, it is not meant to look this easy for one rider.
One reads about rides like Bernard Hinault's at a snowy Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 1980, or Eddy Merckx's repeated long-distance attacks, like at the Tour of Flanders in 1969, and it feels too good to be true, but history was made in Tuscany in 2024. Just like Chris Froome's escape to win the 2018 Giro d'Italia, Pogačar's ride will be remembered.
Surprisingly, it didn’t even look like an explosive, race-detonating move from the UAE Team Emirates rider, it just looked like the Slovenian rolling off the front of the peloton. The sign that it was ridiculous was that no one could follow, not Vuelta a España champion Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease a Bike), not last year’s winner Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers).
The extra distance clearly had a major impact on the race. Combined with some horrid weather in Tuscany on Saturday afternoon, the race was ready to be decided after 135km of the new 215km-long course. All it took was one dig from Pogačar and the race was over. It was finely poised, like a Jenga tower late-on in a game. All the Slovenian did was push the right block. Oh, and be quite good at riding his Colnago.
It helps that he is the best bike rider in the world, but so many previous "rules" of bike racing were proved wrong in this ride. Pogačar had not ridden yet in 2024, there was no "riding into form" here. He didn't think twice about attacking with two hours to go of the race; at no point did it seem like it was too much, either.
Pre-race, he said that he was going to attack on the Monte Sante Marie, but this was a joke. In reality, this is exactly what he did. It must be nice, being that powerful, and also having the bravery to just try it.
"I don’t know why," he said when asked why he attacked where he did.
"The race was really fast from the start and it was already quite selective super early," he continued. "I don’t think that anyone expected that. Then we came to Monte Sante Marie and there was a hailstorm and really tough conditions.
"There were no more resources left in the group with 25 riders and my team made it super hard and there was a moment when you couldn’t see anything, it was so muddy, and I decided to go on the attack there. I knew it was going to be long but when I had a gap I knew that I had to go until the end."
"At first, I was feeling good, really good, and the team did a super job but I could see it was going to be tough to the finish," he said. "When it was really raining a lot I felt good and decided to go solo."
In a second, Pogačar "decided to go solo", push that Jenga brick, and everything came tumbling down. He decided to see better, just like the Duke of Kent urges King Lear in the play of the same name. For the rest of the field, there was very little to be done, as everything seemed so straightforward for the Slovenian.
"It’s a pity that against Tadej there’s not much you can do," Toms Skujiņš, who finished second, said after one of the performances of his career.
Tom Pidcock said much the same, in a revealing television interview.
"Even before Tadej attacked it was full gas, when he attacked it felt like we were in the grupetto," the 2023 winner said, who finished fourth this year, but three minutes behind Pogačar. "There were just dead bodies everywhere and I waited too long, it was a case of too little too late. If I’d played it a bit better I could have been second so I don’t really have any words for that."
"When Tadej went I thought there was no real point in going then, because there was still 80km to go and I was not wanting to go into the red, people were just going off like it was the old circuit, I waited too long in the end," he continued.
"If the race was increased by an extra 30km and it’s flat then ok, but when you add 30km more of the same type of racing then you’re not really racing anymore it feels more attritional."
Saturday was seemingly rough for everyone but Pogačar, who cruised to victory in Siena. Next, the Slovenian moves onto Milan-San Remo in a fortnight's time, where he will have the chance to take a fourth monument. Who knows what rules he will break there.
