Despite him being the best bike rider this century and potentially ever depending on your viewpoint, Tadej Pogačar, with all of his Tour de France jerseys and Monument trophies back at home, is apparently never going to win Milan-Sanremo. The race is against him and it’s not hard enough for him, everyone’s writing, and everyone’s muttering. He himself has even quipped that it’s “going to send me to my grave.”
But I’m here to tell you otherwise, to tell you that on Saturday Tadej Pogačar will win Milan-Sanremo. Maybe I’m caught up in the pre-Classicissima hype, excited for a whole day of anticipation and will-he-won’t-he tension, but I’m convinced he will win. For a number of reasons.
It’s claimed – by people with far more first-hand knowledge about bike racing and its intricate tactics than I have, I should add – that he can’t make the race difficult hours before its conclusion, that he can’t go long, and that he can’t make a race-winning attack on the Cipressa. Stronzate, BS in Italian. This is Tadej Pogačar, he can do whatever he wants, like he’s been doing for the past six-and-a-half seasons.
I’m not saying this will definitely happen, but I foresee a race situation playing out where his seven UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammates – which include powerhouses Isaac Del Toro, Jhonatan Narváez, Nils Politt and Tim Wellens – set a relentless, incessant pace as early as the Passo del Turchino, which will be crested at 150km from the finish.
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From there, his obedient lieutenants – and this part is important, because his domestiques really are selfish and willing slaves when working for the Slovenian – will try to thin the peloton further out on the small ascents of the Capos de Mele, Cervo and Berta. And when they get to the foot of Cipressa, 28km from the finale in Sanremo, it’s showtime, baby.
After making the race as hard as possible (caveat: there’ll still be most of the peloton left at the bottom of the Cipressa), Pogačar and his team will time trial it up the climb. The plan, the team have admitted, is for him to crown the Mediterranean leg-biter in less than nine minutes, smashing Gabriele Colombo’s 1996 record of 9:19.
Most of the argument that Pogačar can’t win from a move on the Cipressa is that it’s just not difficult enough. At 4.1% for 5.6km, it's a legitimate reasoning. But a few things: Pogačar can attack – and win – from anywhere. See Strade Bianche, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the World Championships, Il Lombardia, and multiple other races. Sure, those races have more difficult jumping-off points at earlier junctures, but still, he can and has successfully attacked from far out numerous times before. And while he can win long or short, he is most devastating when he’s got a big lead and a fractured chase group behind him that permits him to coast to victory.
It’s said that he’d be foolish to go solo on the Cipressa because the valley road between there and the Poggio isn’t friendly for a lone attacker. Again, not wrong. But in each of his four appearances in Sanremo, his tactic has been to make his move on the Poggio. Each time he's ‘failed’ – third, fourth, fifth and 12th is deemed defeat, of course, when discussing Pogačar.
Pogačar finished third in a sprint on the Via Roma last March.
So he has to try something new. This is arguably his biggest race between now and his Tour de France defence: he can go all in, leave everything out there, not worry about the consequences. Yes, I hear you say: surely winning Paris-Roubaix (if he competes) is as important, but, no, it is not; it is Milan-Sanremo that eats away at him at night, not some rough French cobbles – at present, he sees those lumpy stones as a nice challenge, a wonderful bonus (just like the Tour of Flanders and the Ardennes, races he’s won before) and not as a race haunting him in the same manner as Sanremo.
And then perhaps to the most crucial factor of Saturday’s racing: the weather. It could very possibly rain, and maybe heavily. The roads are going to be slick. In such conditions, it’s better to be alone on the descent of the Cipressa (and Poggio) rather than in a nervous group; a solo descender is far safer. This works in an attacking Pogačar’s favour.
Finally, if none of the above happens – and I admit it might well not happen – then the other reason pushed by many is that he can’t win a sprint on the Via Roma against the likes of last year’s winner Jasper Philipsen, Michael Matthews, Mads Pedersen and maybe even Filippo Ganna. Well, to counter that: Philipsen is still wounded from his midweek crash in Danilith Nokere Koerse; Matthews is as close but as far away from victory in this race as Pogačar is; Pedersen has to first battle Jonathan Milan for Lidl-Trek leadership and lost to Pogačar in the finishing sprint last year; and Ganna, while obviously capable with second place in 2023, has been way off contesting the finale in his six other appearances. To top this case off, your Honour, Pogačar, as he’s demonstrated repeatedly, can outsprint almost anyone but the pure sprinters. Does he really have to fear bringing someone to the line?
This may all be a load of nonsense and come Saturday evening I’ll be thinking back at how much of a naïve person I was in the days before the season's first Monument, but this is what I think will happen on Saturday, the day when Tadej Pogačar puts the great cycling debate of the 2020s to bed and wins La Primavera.
