How times change. Four years ago, when Tadej Pogačar was interviewed at the start line of the 2019 Amstel Gold Race, he was a neo-pro, about to tackle a race of over 250 kilometres for the first time ever and as he said, “hoping I have enough legs to get to the finish.”
“I’m surprised how well I’ve done this season,” Pogačar said back then, “because going from under-23 to WorldTour is a big difference.” His big 2019 goal, he said, was going to be the now-defunct Tour of California – which he then won.
Fast forward to 2023, and Pogačar’s position in world cycling as he tackles Amstel Gold Race for a second time – after abandoning back in 2019 – could not be more different. Focussing on this season alone, the UAE Team Emirates racer’s track record of ten wins and counting, and in particular his latest victory in his most recent event, the Tour of Flanders, make the Slovenian star a clear favourite for next Sunday.
It’s good that the Amstel organisers have upgraded their photo finish cameras after two somewhat controversially unclear tight finales in straight yearly succession. But with Pogačar back on the startline in Maastricht, you could be forgiven for wondering if they might as well have saved their money until next April.
It’s symptomatic of Pogaçar’s dominance and versatility as a racer that he completely belies the once oft-repeated argument that riders capable of shining on the cobbled Classics won’t get a look-in at the Ardennes. But it’s not just Pogacar, given Amstel Gold has two of the ‘Big Three’ of Flanders already in its palmares – Wout van Aert in 2021 and Mathieu van der Poel in 2019.
If there was a degree of uncertainty about Pogaçar’s ability to deal with the cobbled Classics before 2023, his strength in the hillier one-day races was already beyond question. If he can handle the climbs of Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Il Lombardia, then Amstel Gold Race, more technically demanding but lighter on metres of vertical climbing, falls easily within his Classics racing register.
Neither Van der Poel nor Van Aert are racing on Sunday, nor yet Julian Alaphilippe, with his excellent Ardennes track record, or (to put that rumour to bed for one and for all) the Frenchman’s Soudal-QuickStep teammate Remco Evenepoel. But it would be not only disrespectful but a distortion of the truth to see the 2023 Amstel Gold as a one-man race.
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