The Strade Bianche, the race that starts in the hills around Siena up to Piazza del Campo, was born recently, since 2007 to be precise – very little to be considered a great race in a sport complex and full of contradictions like cycling. Apparently, especially in one-day races, everything is very simple: you pedal from the start to the finish line and the first to arrive has won. The others can go home and will try again next time. In reality, of course, it is much more complicated than that, because to win there are a myriad of team strategies that must run smoothly, unraveling the unexpected that any path – even the seemingly simpler one – can hide. In reality, each race is a story unto itself. This essentially means that not all races can be won equally. And this is also true for what we call “Classic” or “semi-Classic”, that is, those races that almost always involve the same route to be repeated year after year.
If the path is always more or less the same, one would expect that the course of the race will always be more or less the same. And so, even in a race as young as the Strade Bianche, the script we got used to had always been similar, albeit with some impromptu improvisation. Basically there was always a lot of selection in the central phase, the one with the longest stretches of dirt road (or “white roads”). From the small group that remained, in the last kilometers with the last sectors in dirt came the small group that was going to play the victory on the last climb, inside Siena, to get to Piazza del Campo.
Although sometimes things like this can happen (photo by Tim de Waele / Getty Images).
With some variations, of course, because then there can be someone’s coup on one of the last sectors of dirt roads or a solitary attack at the end to blow up the schemes. Nothing too exceptional, however, beyond a few slight exceptions, as Mathieu van der Poel taught us last year, impregnable on the climb to Santa Caterina.
But cycling always ends up astonishing you and on Saturday, while we were all waiting for the last kilometers to witness someone’s solo in the final, busy following the race with our eyes fixed on our opera libretto, Tadej Pogacar decided to blow up all the programs with a reckless attack 50 kilometers from the finish.
The solo
The Monte Sante Marie sector, one of the longest in the race, is located in a key position on the Strade Bianche route. It is placed at the end of the central part, where the longest sectors are located, and in a certain sense marks the beginning of the final phase of the race marked by much shorter and steeper sectors. It’s the introduction to the grand finale, if you like. Where usually the group ends up disintegrating, leaving only the men in front of them who will then really play their chances of victory, one against the other at the last breath.
That of the Sante Marie is a very varied sector, precisely because of its length: you enter the plain, face a series of small ups and downs, then a short climb, throw yourself downhill and then climb up to a long slight slope followed by other ups and downs. At the top of that short climb in the first part of the dirt road sector, the group gets longer after a taste of Alaphilippe trying to stir things up. In single file there are Simon Clarke, Quinn Simmons and then Alaphilippe with Pogacar at the wheel.
There is a precise moment when Quinn Simmons turns to check the situation behind her. The first downhill stretch is over and we are in that flat phase before another downhill sector. Julian Alaphilippe also turns to check because he feels that Pogacar has gone out of his way by breaking that classic single file. The Slovenian joins the world champion and climbs up the group, takes the lead and takes the descent in front.
The moment when @TamauPogi took the @StradeBianche #White roads ???? pic.twitter.com/qNsOnUdnRO
– Fans (@ventolateral) March 5, 2022
Driving the bicycle downhill on those dirt roads is a very delicate operation and therefore it is often better to stay as far ahead as possible to avoid problems. At that moment, therefore, it almost seems that Pogacar is there in front to avoid risks and trace his trajectories in peace. But at the second corner it is clear that Pogacar wants to look for risks rather than avoid them. At the third corner he enters fast with the bravado of his 23 years and ends up widening the trajectory as if he were a motorcyclist trying to exploit all the curbs of the track, and at that point it is also evident to his opponents that this is a real attack. .
At the bottom of the descent, Pogacar has a few meters of advantage, he turns and insists. Behind Alaphilippe elbowed to go in front and try to close; he stands up on the pedals but his action is not effective enough. Pogacar takes away the water bottles he still has on him: a useless weight; his masseurs who are waiting for him at the exit of the Sante Marys will give him new ones.
Alaphilippe reduces the gap with great effort but then the road starts to climb again and Pogacar persists undeterred in his action and the Frenchman suddenly dies. Those few meters of advantage that he had at the bottom of the descent widen visibly and while behind his opponents they struggle to understand what is happening, Pogacar goes away. They will see him again only at the finish line.
Photo at Tim de Waele/Getty Images
At the exit of the Monte Sante Marie sector, about 42 kilometers from the finish and after only 8 kilometers from that solitary attack downhill, Tadej Pogacar is in command with more than 1 minute ahead of the group pulled by the men of the Quick Step – Alaphilippe , Asgreen and Serry. In the middle, in a bain-marie, the young Spaniard from Ineos, Carlos Rodriguez, who in his naive purity had sensed Pogacar’s madness and had tried, in vain, to follow him.
At that point Tadej Pogacar is alone, chased by the two-time world champion in charge and by the outgoing winner of the Tour of Flanders (and by the good Pieter Serry, who in any case very poor on pace is not given his long career as a wingman at Quick Step). In front of him he has over 40 kilometers of road which is actually an infinite ups and downs with large stretches where the wind blows against and three sectors of dirt roads still to be tackled.
The paradox, if you like, is that at that point everyone knows it’s over. That Pogacar will go away alone until the finish line without anyone really being able to do anything about it. It is precisely in this that we see the greatness of the Slovenian champion: not so much in his victories but in how he has now reached such a level that when he starts alone in attacks that for all his opponents would be simply absurd, there is nothing to do. do.
It is no longer, therefore, a mere question of technique or “legs”, as they say in the jargon. It’s not just a question of physical power, that’s it. Because doing fifty kilometers alone may not be something everyone can do, but many would have it in their legs as well. It is a question of thought, of head, of imagination. Some of his opponents might even know how to do such an action. The difference between her and him is that they can’t think of it – they don’t think it’s possible. For Pogacar, however, such an attack is a necessary gesture – the most logical choice. I would have said normal, but clearly there is nothing normal about Tadej Pogacar.
Break
Pogacar’s victory on Saturday is not just another piece in an already staggering roll of honor for the age, and it would be an understatement to evaluate it in this way. Sometimes there is a tendency to exalt prestigious victories obtained in very favorable and particular contexts, and to evaluate them more than victories in lower level races but the offspring of extraordinary actions. So how does this victory at the Strade Bianche stand in the history of Pogacar?
To answer this question we must remember that, even if it cannot be compared in history to the so-called Classics, the Strade Bianche has been acquiring an increasingly solid prestige in recent years, given the importance that cyclists themselves recognize. I have already mentioned van der Poel’s attack on the Santa Caterina climb last year, but one could also mention the victories of van Aert and Alaphilippe. Moments like this, and like the victory of Pogacar, are the signal that the most important cyclists in the world are keen to win it, even trying to exceed their limits, and their exploits are giving it considerable prestige for a race that has just 15 years. Other examples could be given from the past but what matters anyway is that it would be a mistake to consider this as a minor – minor victory compared, for example, to a victory in another race that today we consider more prestigious, perhaps in one of what we like to call “Classic Monument” as if this thing really had a real meaning.
This is not a victory like any other, but the triumph of a phenomenon that has destroyed the competition, making its opponents (who, we remember, were not the latest arrivals) look like mere extras, helpless in the face of its domination. The exceptionality is such that it is not absurd to consider it a real breaking point compared to the recent past of cycling, made up of shots in the last kilometers and hyperspecialized cyclists.
Longest-winning solo attacks in a World Tour one-day race:
57km – Philippe Gilbert (2017 Tour of Flanders)
53km – Tom Boonen (2012 Paris-Roubaix)
50km – Tadej Pogacar (2022 White Roads)– CafeRoubaix (@CafeRoubaix) March 5, 2022
A statistical pill that makes us better understand the extent of what Pogacar did on Saturday.
He is not the only one who is marking a before and after, because in this speech Wout Van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel should also be mentioned, just to give two examples, who are helping to change this sport by bringing it into the future. But Tadej Pogacar is special, more than all the others. Because he is only 23 years old and has already won the Tour de France twice (in only two participations): the first time overturning Roglic in the final time trial and the second time knocking out all the competition with a single sensational action that is very reminiscent of that. of this Saturday for how it was designed and built. Not happy, last year he won the Liège-Bastogne-Liège in a short sprint in April and then the Giro di Lombardia at the end of the season, in addition to the Olympic bronze at the Tokyo Games. If he retires in the morning, Pogacar could already be considered one of the strongest cyclists in the history of the sport.
Its size, however, as mentioned is not only defined by the palmares, but also by the exceptional things it does on the bike. Pogacar is a cyclist who knows how to go fast on any terrain: he wins in time trials, dominates in long climbs, knows how to go fast on dirt roads, has an excellent starting point on dry bumps and in short sprints he is second to none. In short, he is one of those strange beings who starts as a favorite in any race he participates in, regardless of week-long stage races, grand laps or one-day races. How many years are such dominant cyclists born? We have to get used to the idea that Tadej Pogacar is now so great that it is no longer the races that he wins that give him more fame but it is the very fact that he wins them that gives those races a little more prestige. S.and today the Strade Bianche is a slightly more important race than it was last Friday, thanks above all to Pogacar and his insane attack of 50 kilometers alone.
