Tadej Pogacar Seals Triple Crown With Win In UCI Road Worlds Road Race
Tadej Pogacar Seals Triple Crown With Win In UCI Road Worlds Road Race
Tadej Pogacar added the world road race title at the UCI Road Worlds 2024 to his TDF and Giro d'Italia victories to take the first triple crown since 1987.
Tadej Pogacar added the world road race title at the UCI Road World Championships 2024 to his Tour de France and Giro d'Italia victories Sunday to become the first man since 1987 to win cycling's triple crown in the same season.
The 26-year-old Slovenian won the 273-kilometer race around Zurich in a time of 6 hours, 27 minutes, 30 seconds, with Australia's Ben O'Connor at 34 seconds and Dutch one-day specialist Mathieu van der Poel in third at 58 seconds.
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Pogacar wrote himself into the history books with an unorthodox long-range attack, rarely seen at this level, to join Ireland's Stephen Roche from 1987 and Belgian Eddy Merckx from 1974 as a men's triple crown champion.
Annemiek van Vleuten achieved the women's triple in 2022.
Pogacar attacked with a sudden and unanswered acceleration 100 kilometers out, with Slovenian teammate Jan Tratnik dropping back from an escape group to pace him to the head of the race -- a position he would never relinquish.
"It looked like a stupid attack, but I came here for the victory, and luckily, I made it," Pogacar said. "I never gave up. All these years, I've been targeting the Tour de France and not the world title, which I've never won before, but this year, it all fell into place."
Any race with Pogacar, Van der Poel and double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel could expect to be hotly contested, and this proved to be the case.
Evenepoel's entire Belgian team had built up a head of steam at the front of the peloton to keep the Tour-Giro champion within touching distance for two tense hours.
"If you speak in normal ways, you'd think it was a suicidal move, and we were coming closer on the last lap, but when we were at 30 seconds or so, he was going downhill, so he managed to keep the lead," Evenepoel said.
Evenepoel was frequently frustrated, waving his arms at other riders to take up some of the work foisted upon him in the chase.
Pavel Sivakov, a Pogacar teammate at UAE, rode out ahead with the winner for around 40 kilometers, before the maverick triple Tour de France winner put the hammer down and went for it alone.
Pogacar skipped the Olympics to target the triple crown, which he sealed with this win over a 273-kilometer course that suited him with its short punchy climbs and kicks at 12%.
Van der Poel said he was proud of his performance.
"I thought it was quite a stupid move to be honest, to go from that far with the groups behind controlling the race, but he proved us wrong," added the 29-year-old Van der Poel.
For O'Connor, the silver medal result caps a solid season after he led the Vuelta a España for 12 days.
"Tactics, being smart, I dunno what you can put it down to, but I found a great moment, and as soon as you have a gap, you have to commit," he said.
The 2020 and 2021 world champion, Julian Alaphilippe, fell and dislocated his shoulder after an hour, while other fancied riders in Spain's Mikel Landa and Denmark's Mattias Skjelmose dropped out.
The race set off at 11 in the morning (local time) from the widely pedestrianized town of Winterthur and included seven laps around Zurich, with a challenging 4,470 meters of elevation that was expected to favor the more slender riders.
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