Ripping up the script is the Tadej Pogacar way, and on Sunday the Slovene's unique approach to bike racing won him the world road race championship in Zurich, thanks to an audacious, borderline foolhardy attack 100km from the finish.
Finishing solo, just 33sec ahead of the Australian Ben O'Connor, Pogacar joined Eddy Merckx and Stephen Roche, the only others to have landed men's cycling's toughest prize, the triple crown of Giro d'Italia, Tour de France and world road title in the same season.
Pogacar reflected, "I had put a lot of pressure on myself for today... I had never had the world championship as a clear goal, but this year after the perfect season it was a clear goal."
With almost constant climbing and descending on the 27km circuit around the Swiss city, there was an obvious limit to what team tactics could accomplish, and although Pogacar's initial plan was to wait for the final 30km, he sensed that...
Collection
[
|
...
]