No one even puts on a brave face anymore. No one even tries to pretend that they have a chance. When Tadej Pogačar is in the race, he will win the race. That’s just how it goes. There was hope, pre-Strade Bianche, that Paul Seixas, the latest French wonderkid to be burdened with the pressure of an entire nation’s near-50 years of hurt, would give Pogačar a run for his money and perhaps avoid the inevitable result. There was optimism, too, that former winners on the Tuscan gravel roads – Tom Pidcock and Wout van Aert – could repeat their past glories. But, nope, not to be. Pogačar won again, his fourth Strade, and the mood, at the start of another season, is tangibly downbeat. There’s just no way past the man from UAE Team Emirates-XRG.
“I think you can feel a bit of the sombreness from everyone here,” Pidcock said at the end of the race. “When UAE are like that, there’s not much you can do.” By ‘that’ he means placing three riders in the top six – Isaac Del Toro in third, and Jan Christen in sixth. UAE don’t just win through Pogačar, but they crowd out the top-10 as well. “It’s just not really that fun, to be honest,” Pidcock sighed.
Seixas, Decathlon CMA CGM’s young starlet, was delighted with second place. He ought to be, too. He’s only 19. But even he pointed to frustrations. “This was the best result I could get today,” he said. “Tadej Pogačar was as he was in every race in 2025 and 2024: he’s one step, or two steps, ahead of the others.”
Pogačar claimed his fourth Strade title. Image by Marco Bertorello/Getty Images.
Wout van Aert, who finished 10th just two months after breaking his ankle, shared similar sentiments. Ones of helplessness. “Words fail me,” he told the media, including Wielerflits. “You kind of expect it, but he does it every time. You realise the race is only for second place. He forces it.”
It’s not to say that the peloton begin the race racing for second. They start with genuine ambitions of being the rider to prevent Pogačar from adding another victory to his palmarès. But that rarely happens. For Pidcock, who rode to seventh, his shot of glory was over on the Monte Sante Marie – the gravel sector where Pogačar took off.
“My chain fell off twice on the Sante Marie and that really killed my momentum,” the Pinarello-Q36.5 rider rued. “But I wouldn’t have been there with Tadej anyway. I don’t think it changed the race much apart from taking a bit more out of me. It’s so difficult when you’re in the group behind and you know the race is gone. You can always think that this is just the race now, but it’s not really how it is when one guy is in front.”
Seixas endured his own peculiar issues. “It was a bit strange,” he reflected. “When he [Pogačar] attacked, I tried to follow but Del Toro blocked me. Not once or twice, but three times. I was held up. It was a game and they decided to play it that way. I had to close the gap alone but when Tadej is ahead of you, 20 or 30 metres is obviously too much. I tried to get back on his wheel and was very close, but it was 500m too long. He controlled his effort, and he didn’t want me on his wheel. It was really tough. After Pogačar broke away, I was already with Del Toro, but he didn’t want to take over. That was understandable though because he had Tadej in front.”
Though Pidcock was downbeat, both Seixas and Van Aert could take heart from their performances. The latter given that this was only his second race back – “I'm still missing something, but not much to be in that group behind Pogačar. I'm happy with that,” he said – and the former because he’s the rising star. “That I finished second and managed to get him [Del Toro] off my wheel was incredible,” Seixas smiled. “I’m very happy with second place. It’s incredible to be here.” His time will come. He will be a future Strade winner. But he’ll probably have to wait until the Pogačar era is a thing of the past.
Cover image: Tim de Waele/Getty Images
