“It’s a tough one to crack,” Tadej Pogačar said of Milan-Sanremo, 17 hours before he met his nemesis once again, the race that keeps on obdurately resisting him, thwarting him each and every year. They, one part rivals and one part admirers in the peloton, said in his desperate attempt to win the season’s first Monument, the Slovenian would go long, try to cause chaos as far as 100km before the Via Roma – race tactics never before imagined, let alone tried – and he said he’d let rip on the Cipressa. Not since March 1996, two-and-a-half years before Tadej Pogačar was even born, has any Milan-Sanremo attack been successful 24km out.
But the world champion is bold, aggressive, tenacious, bloody fun. Out of the slipstream of Jhonatan Narváez, 24km out, and boom, he was away. That familiar wrestle of his bike, his centre of gravity leaning over his handlebars, the green Hulk on his frame bursting out of the carbon, roaring into life. He was opening fissures, splitting the uncrackable, doing what everyone said he would, but no one knew if it would be successful.
Except he wasn’t truly away. Mathieu van der Poel, race winner in 2023, was right there, breathing down his neck. Filippo Ganna, too. Out of the saddle, Pogačar went again. Van der Poel, in the saddle, equalled him. A respite, and another attack. Ganna faded, but Van der Poel did not. Another attack, the fourth, his matches burning, but his supply still intact. 970 watts screaming out of his pedals, his wheels spinning at an average of 38.6kph, uphill. Down the Cipressa together, but on the Poggio the battle resumed, Ganna in the rear mirror, out of sight, just, but definitely not out of mind.
Pogačar tried a fifth time, but Van der Poel, just like this race, kept on resisting. It was enthralling, out-your-seat, breathless, nail-biting, immense, breakneck stuff. Mauro Gianetti, UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s manager, said it was “an incredible show for cycling”. Mauro, it was an incredible show for sport, not only cycling. A gladiatorial head-to-head, impossible to call, The Conqueror trying to conquer the unconquerable.
Onto the Via Roma, two become three, Ganna back in the fray, the party a festival, and a blockbuster one at that. Pogačar had tried on his terrain, valiantly, inevitably, desperately, but it would remain out of sight, the dream as far away as it is tantalisingly close. Van der Poel would edge Ganna out first in the sprint, claiming his seventh Monument and second Sanremo, and Pogačar would settle for third, again. The podium's little step he so rarely frequents; to him, the loser's step. Head-to-head, the score reads six wins to Van der Poel, three wins to Pogačar. Only Jonas Vingegaard can rustle up anything similar. What a contest, what a duo.
“To be better,” is how the Slovenian responded to the question of how he wins the race that just will not let him win it. “We did everything, not just me but all the team did everything. We can be really proud of how we raced. Every year we do better. We showed more aggression on the Cipressa, more willpower. We did everything to make the race more explosive but it was not enough.”
You always want what you can’t have, always enjoy the chase of the prize that keeps refusing the bait, and despite his exasperation and his frustration, he laughed, cracking a smile at the race he cannot crack. “I would prefer if the Poggio was 5km at 10%, but it is what it is. It’s a hard race for me to make the difference. The law of physics is playing here and you cannot do magic.” Usually, he is the magician, wowing and disbelieving everyone, but not here, not at Milan-Sanremo. What on earth has he to do? “There’s another chance next year.” And the year after, and after, and after. Until he finally wins the unwinnable.
