Already set in stone? Tadej Pogacar enters the game at Strade Bianche

On Thursday afternoon, Tadej Pogačar will be feted on the slopes of the Colle Pinzuto, where a commemorative stone to mark his three Strade Bianche wins will be unveiled. Sagely, the inscription doesn’t include the years of his victories. By the time Pogačar passes the same point on Saturday afternoon, after all, the expectation is that he will be well on his way to a fourth triumph in Siena. 

At this point in his career, Pogačar feels as inevitable as the tides and the bulk of the peloton has essentially given up on the folly of trying to defy that ineluctable force of nature. When Pogačar lines up at a race these days, victory is usually a question of ‘when’ and ‘how’ rather than ‘whether.’

Strade Bianche is a particularly happy hunting ground in that regard. Pogačar was already a two-time Tour de France winner and two-time Monument winner when he lined up in 2022, but his 50km solo raid that afternoon was arguably the first truly Merckx-ian exploit of his career.

When Pogačar returned in 2024, Strade Bianche marked the beginning of what we now recognise as his imperial phase. Then as now, the Tuscan race was his first outing of the season. At the start, Pogačar was playfully asked where he was going to attack. “Sante Marie,” he smiled, but he wasn’t joking.

Like Babe Ruth in the 1932 World Series, Pogačar had called his shot. That afternoon on the Sante Marie, with 81km still to race, Pogačar matter-of-factly accelerated clear of the field, disappearing into the dust. They’ve barely seen him again since.

Pogačar has claimed 44 wins across the past two seasons, including three Grand Tours, two world titles and five Monuments. But the numbers only tell part of a story that has been increasingly punctuated by outlandish solo raids. Most of the time, Pogačar has been in a race entirely of his own.

Cycling fans in the Pogačar era can be divided into two camps – those still enthused by the miracles he produces every time he pins on a number, and those who find themselves increasingly pining for a touch of uncertainty and suspense in the biggest races.

Pogačar has at least offered some variety by slightly tweaking his racing programme for 2026. With Strade Bianche, Milan-San Remo, the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix and Liège-Bastogne-Liège on his schedule, he has opted against lining out in any stage race until the Tour de Romandie in April.

The decision meant Pogačar was absent from competition for the first weeks of the season, which has in turn allowed some other riders the space to showcase their talents with stirring individual performances. First, it was Remco Evenepoel, who scorched the earth at the Challenge Mallorca and Volta Valenciana before a sobering outing at the UAE Tour.

Isaac del Toro took up the mantle in the Emirates with the searing climbing displays that netted him his first WorldTour stage victory, while Paul Seixas set French hearts aflutter with his first pro win on the Volta ao Algarve and his astonishing solo triumph at the Ardèche Classic.

On Saturday, Mathieu van der Poel started his road season by cruising to an utterly dominant victory at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, but even after that procession, the Dutchman was cautious about what was still to come this spring. 

“I think everybody knows how strong Tadej can be there,” Van der Poel said when asked what it meant for the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. “I’ll just do what I can to be in the best shape possible. I think he showed already it’s really difficult to beat him, but I’ll try anyway.”

If Van der Poel, the only rider these past two years to compete on the same plane as Pogačar for at least a few weeks of the season, is this circumspect about his prospects, then how must the rest of the peloton feel?

Braced for impact, perhaps.

Pogačar hasn’t raced since last October, when he compiled an astounding collection of solitary displays, annexing the World Championships, the European Championships and Il Lombardia on successive weekends with disarming superiority.

His winter has been typically low-key, punctuated by gladhanding with sponsors on Gran Canaria and bleaching his hair in the manner of a young Slim Shady, but the assumption that Pogačar will hit the ground running in 2026 is sound because, well, that’s what he always does. 

Pogačar has won his first race of the season for each of the past six years – the Volta Valenciana in 2020, the UAE Tour in 2021 and 2025, Strade Bianche in 2022 and 2024, and the Clásica Jaén in 2023. Only as a neo-pro in 2019 did he fail to do so, and even then he showed flashes of quality at the Tour Down Under before winning his second pro race, the Volta ao Algarve.

Ill fortune is always an occupational hazard, of course, but a crash at last year’s Strade Bianche still didn’t knock Pogačar off his stride. The world champion quickly picked himself up and eventually burnt off an impressive Tom Pidcock to seal his third victory in Siena.

Pidcock, winner of Strade Bianche in 2023, will be back again this year and the Pinarello-Q36.5 man is a rarity in that he has few complexes when it comes to racing against the Slovenian, especially on the gravel of Tuscany. That ability and attitude make him the most likely external challenger to Pogačar, particularly with Van der Poel opting against competing.

Wout van Aert and Egan Bernal both return to Strade Bianche for the first time since the scintillating 2021 edition of the race, but they know the lie of the land – both in terms of the course and cycling itself – has changed considerably since then.

In truth, the most compelling question for Pogačar on Saturday might come from within his own UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad, which has been amassing wins at an astonishing rate of knots even without their leader, with their tally already at 13.

Del Toro’s break-out Giro d’Italia display last year was forged on the gravel stage to Siena, and the Mexican has gone up a couple of rungs since, as evidenced by his UAE Tour showing.

It will be intriguing to see how UAE deploy Del Toro here, given that he is set to make his Tour de France debut in the service of Pogačar in July. Will Del Toro be charged simply with leading out Pogačar’s inevitable attack on Saturday or will he be given a degree of latitude to chase a result of his own?

As ever with Pogačar these days, much of the suspense at this Strade Bianche seems destined to come from how he will win the race rather than whether. And before the dust settles in Siena on Saturday afternoon, talk will inevitably turn to the challenges of the year ahead, from Milan-San Remo to Paris-Roubaix, from a fifth Tour de France to a third rainbow jersey. The expectations are relentless, but then so is Pogačar.