As the dark nights draw in and the 2022 season nears its end, many of the peloton’s biggest stars have already finished racing for the year.
Remco Evenepoel only briefly showed off his new rainbow jersey on home roads at Binche-Chimay-Binche before calling it a day; Wout van Aert finished his exhaustingly competitive season at the Worlds; the injury sustained at La Vuelta a España brought Primož Roglič’s season to a premature end; and Mathieu van der Poel will not race on the road again in 2022 after the acrimonious circumstances of his World Championships withdrawal.
However, there are other top names who have continued to stay competitive even as we enter October, lured by what is one of the toughest and most prestigious of all the one-day classics, Il Lombardia. As the last of the five monuments, it’s one of the biggest prizes in cycling, and boasts a start-line worthy of that label.
TADEJ POGACAR – UAE TEAM EMIRATES
It’s rare that Tadej Pogačar isn’t among the top favourites for a race he starts, and in this case, he has established himself as the sole frontrunner. Recent victories at the GP de Montréal and Tre Valli Varesine confirm his good form, even if a subdued showing at the World Championships and defeat to Enric Mas (Movistar) at the Giro dell’Emilia showed chinks in his armour that were not apparent during his pre-Tour de France purple patch.
Tadej Pogačar (Image: Getty)
That purple patch proved his credentials as a classics rider who could compete in all kinds of terrain from the gravel (first at Strade Bianche), to the cobbles (fourth at the Tour of Flanders) to the relatively flat terrain (fifth at Milan-San Remo), and, worryingly for his rivals, the climber-friendly Il Lombardia parcours suits him better than perhaps any of the other monuments — as was apparent last year, when he rode away with Fausto Masnada to win by almost a minute. Add to that an intimidatingly strong roster of domestiques that includes one-day specialists Diego Ulissi and Davide Formolo, plus Vuelta a España stars João Almeida and Juan Ayuso, it’s clear Pogačar is the man to beat.
JULIAN ALAPHILIPPE- QUICK STEP-ALPHA VINYL
A rotten run of injuries and bad luck has prevented Julian Alaphilippe from ever getting going in 2022, limiting him to just two wins all year. But he hasn’t written off his season just yet, and will compete in what is only his second Il Lombardia since placing second here behind Vincenzo Nibali in 2017…