It’s a tough time being the next best thing in the Pogačar era
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Adam Becket
News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com – should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.
If you had to name the rider who finished second at the Giro d’Italia this year, could you? I put this question to my colleagues yesterday, people who are more immersed in the world of professional cycling than the general public, and it stumped them.
This has been the year of Tadej Pogačar. The Slovenian won the Triple Crown of the Giro, the Tour de France and the World Championships, we all know that now, but it was the manner that he won them that we will remember more than anything. He eviscerated the competition at all three, winning six stages at both the Giro and the Tour, and then winning the Worlds road race from 100km out.
It has left us in a situation where the only live race has been the one for second, almost from the gun.
“I came here expecting him to win the Worlds so it didn’t really change my perception,” Ben O’Connor, second on Sunday, explained post-race. “There’s alway someone better than everyone else, it was the same in tennis for so many years [he said referring to the era of Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic]. You do your best, you don’t go under any illusion. I’ve come up with second, and I’m a pretty happy guy and I’m going to enjoy it.”
Riders enter races where Pogačar is on the start line thinking that the best hope they have is to make the podium, not to challenge for the overall win. They just know that the Slovenian is a moment away from one of his rampaging attacks, and they will be left chasing the crumbs.
Perhaps it is time for a new category, a race within a race, like the under-23 women’s has been inside the elite women’s road race for the last three years. The non-Pogačar podium, made up of the three next best riders, the mortals who can’t do things like attack with hours to go of a race and hold off everyone else.
Ben O’Connor’s outstanding ride to second should not be forgotten just because he didn’t stand on the top step; the Australian has had an excellent year of the own with fourth at the Giro, second at the Vuelta a España and second at the Worlds. It’s impressive, and it’s not his fault that it fades into comparison with Pogačar.
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We are already at a point where the riders finishing behind him are happy with their own result, rather than bitter they can’t match the phenomenon ahead of them. After all, this is Tadej’s world, and we’re just living in it.
“I had a really good prep for this kind of race, and I think I also did one of my best performances ever, and I can be really happy with it,” Mathieu van der Poel, who finished third, said. “There was one exceptional rider, but if you take him away… I’m really satisfied with the race.”
This isn’t a young rider, or someone like O’Connor being delighted with his best performance at an elite one-day race, but the defending champion. Van der Poel couldn’t have done any better, sprinted to third at the end of a route which didn’t suit him, and yet Pogačar was still ahead of him.
Just how long this can continue for is a live question. Pogačar won 23 races this season, and isn’t done yet, with Il Lombardia still to come. They were all WorldTour events or the Worlds. If he was a team, the Slovenian would sit top of the WorldTour victory rankings.
For his competitors, it’s hard to call them rivals when Pogačar has been so dominant, runner up is as good as it gets, and they should be proud to finish behind the rider of the 21st century, possibly the best rider ever. Eddy Merckx already thinks he’s better than he was, and that’s a man who won it all, repeatedly.
The rider that finished second at the Giro, by the way, was Dani Martínez, with Geraint Thomas in third. Well done if you knew that. In the Pogačar era, that’s impressive in itself.
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