Tadej Pogačar moved clear as the outright most successful rider in Strade Bianche history with his fourth victory on Saturday, and to be honest, I think he did so with some energy still left in the tank.
While on commentary duty, we discussed what his rivals could actually do to prevent him from winning one-day races, as when you look at UAE Team Emirates-XRG‘s team and the Slovenian himself, there’s no way you can beat Pogačar with the way he’s riding at the moment.
His team knows how to control the race and the breakaway; they just let them go and then slowly ramp up the pace until they need to blow it into pieces, which is when the likes of Florian Vermeersch, Jan Christen, and Isaac del Toro – all riders individually capable of winning a race like this – set a pace so high, that when Pogačar attacks, there’s nobody that looks capable of following him.
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Only perhaps, my man of the day, Paul Seixas. The way the Frenchman rode, while clearly on the limit and perhaps lacking experience in these race situations, was promising. He almost made it back across to the UAE leader after losing a few bike lengths, but it’s easier said than done on those gravel roads, and Pogačar showed his might by being able to accelerate again when he saw the 19-year-old closing in.
If Seixas was able to make contact with Pogačar’s back wheel and momentarily recover, it could have been a totally different race.
If I were to pick fault with Seixas and Decathlon’s approach to this year’s race, though, I’d question why, after Pogačar had escaped up the road, Seixas was the man pulling on the front of the chase group. There were approximately a dozen riders in the group, and he had two teammates spitting at the rear end of it. It’s hard to understand that tactic. Seixas was the other guy potentially able to win that race, especially when you think about it being Pogačar’s first race back; he may have hit fatigue with 25km to go, or even suffered a puncture. Keep the gap below a minute, and…
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