How do you stop Tadej Pogačar? Rivals remain at a loss to cycling's most unanswerable question

How do you react to irrepressible brilliance? How do you respond when the inevitable occurs? Whenever Tadej Pogačar attacks, it’s the dilemma facing his rivals. One second to think, two seconds to act. Max. Any more, and he’s gone, he’s away, the seeds of an unassailable lead germinating at breakneck speed. So when Pogačar attacked with 100 kilometres from the finish of the World Championships road race – one hundred kilometres – his shocked competitors knew they had to figure out a response, despite its frankly absurd distance to go. But the solution to the conundrum of the century – how do you respond to a Pogačar attack – remains unanswered, and perhaps unanswerable.

The Slovenian’s principal foes, the ones who were most likely to deny him the Triple Crown he went on to achieve, were the winners of the past two editions: Mathieu van der Poel and Remco Evenepoel. At first, the duo remained unflustered and unnerved, but after 25km and with Pogačar already at the head of the race alongside a tiring Pavel Sivakov, Evenepoel was riled and agitated, gesticulating with Matteo Jorgenson. Angry Remco: engaged. Over the following 90 minutes of action, the Belgian would shake his head more, throw his hands up in a huff, and curse the lack of cohesion. Van der Poel would attack several times, but never was he able to shed riders from his wheel until the final few metres when he won a sprint for the bronze medal. It was 100km of half-baked attempts at guessing the answer, all amounting to nothing.

Pogačar knew that everyone else would look at each other when he, Van der Poel and Evenepoel made their expected attacks, so he played the surprise card by launching a move so far from the finish that he bewildered his adversaries, allowing him to quite easily build a 45-second margin that he kept to the finish. His physical performance was an exhibition – another one to add to the other 20 this year – but most impressive about it was how much of a tactical masterclass it was. With one bold, unforeseen move, he limited the future opportunities of Van der Poel, Evenepoel, and anyone else who dreamt of some pretty rainbow bands. And he did it when he did it because he knew that no one, absolutely no one, was going to willingly work with Van der Poel and Evenepoel, everyone conscious that short-term unison with either of the duo would result in a proverbial knife being stuck and twizzled in their back just a little while later. It’s often not remarked upon, but Pogačar is as tactically astute as his physical capacity is biologically incomprehensible.

The recently-turned 26-year-old’s year has been historic and extraordinary, nothing of its kind since Stephen Roche in 1987 and Eddy Merckx in 1974, and one of the consequences of his astonishing season and run of success is how he has suppressed the creativity and imagination of his rivals, leaving them stumped for ideas each and every time. Of course, when he goes on a climb, there’s few, if anyone, who can keep pace with him, but bike races are still attritional affairs, one-day races huge six-to-seven hour slogs, and thus there is a lot of road to make a difference and to ensure that the best rider doesn’t actually win. Tactics can beat better legs – see Ben O’Connor: his Vuelta a España stage six win is a prime example, and so too was the Australian catching his competitors off-guard and attacking in the final kilometre to claim silver in Zurich.

Yet no matter what the parcours is – with the notable exception of Milano-Sanremo that remains stubbornly out of reach for him – Pogačar always finds a way to out-smart and out-manoeuvre his opponents, and they barely ever figure out an adequate response. Instead, they are reduced to looking at each other, remonstrating frustratedly, and blaming everyone but themselves for not closing the gap to the man out front. Pogačar, the new and deserving world champion, has trapped his rivals in his orbit, thrown the keys away, and they’re unable to comprehend a way of getting out of it.