On the Tour of Lombardy 2023, Pogacar makes history again and Pinot leaves – Libération

The 25-year-old Slovenian won the last big race of the season this Saturday, October 7: his 17th victory of 2023 in a race which was also the ultimate of national glory Thibaut Pinot.

The Slovenians Tadej Pogacar, Primoz Roglic, the Belgian Remco Evenepoel, a royal third were lined up this Saturday October 7 at the start of the Tour of Lombardy. And it was with a two-step poker game that the first won the ultimate monument of the cycling season: an attack on the last climb of the day while the Jumbo-Visma squeezed out the peloton with a hell of a pace, and a new layer on the descent. Adijo the company as they say in Ljubljana when we take leave. At the finish, the leader of the UAE team took almost a minute (52 seconds) from the Italian Andrea Bagioli (2nd) and Primoz Roglic and won the “dead leaves classic” for the third time in a row .

Cycling fans then moistened the middle finger of their left hand with a delicate lick to flip through the great book of cycling history and find the previous hat-trick on Lombardy. They had to go back to 1949 and Fausto Coppi. The Italian Alfredo Binda achieved the same feat in the 1920s.

Thibaut Pinot under the applause

Let’s continue talking numbers. Pogacar, badly beaten in the Tour de France (second all the same with two stage victories), won his 17th victory of the season, the biggest total in the peloton and not in second-place races since he won, among others, on the Tour of Flanders and the Tour of Lombardy, the Flèche Wallonne, the Amstel Gold Race or even Paris-Nice. At only 25 years old, he has already compiled 63 hits since the start of his career.

And our national Thibaut Pinot, who was competing in the last race of his career? The organizers put him in the spotlight by making him start at the front of the line, to the applause of all the leaders in the peloton. He gave up on the first ramp but until the final pedal strokes of his life as a professional cyclist he was able to savor his popularity with the cheers of hundreds of supporters who came to bid him farewell.