Ask the dust: Tadej Pogacar's dominance remains unanswerable at Strade Bianche

The sense of resignation was already travelling by induction through the peloton as UAE Team Emirates-XRG piled on the pressure on the approach to the long gravel sector at Monte Sante Marie with 90km of Strade Bianche still to race.

Tadej Pogačar’s previous victories in Siena had been forged on this very stretch of gravel and an attack here was an inevitability. Everyone knew it was coming. Everyone knew it would be hard. And everyone knew there was nothing they could do about it. 

After Florian Vermeersch and Jan Christen had strung things out on the gravel, Pogačar struck out with 80km to go. Debutant Paul Seixas chased doggedly for a kilometre or so, even closing to within touching distance of Pogačar, but this still never looked like developing into a real contest.

In truth, Pogačar was simply figuring how much venom he needed to add to his race-winning attack in this, his first outing of the season. After checking over his shoulder, he adjusted the dose and Seixas’ resistance was snuffed out. The live television coverage had only just begun, but the race was already over. 

Commentary teams the world over were thus left with the problem of figuring out how to fill up the air time from there to Siena. Every superlative to describe Pogačar’s miraculous superiority has already been used to saturation, wrung out and then used all over again over the years, and it would have been an insult to the intelligence of the viewers to suggest that he could possibly be caught here.

Perhaps the most redundant debate in cycling concerns Strade Bianche’s status as a possible sixth Monument. Classics have always risen and fallen in prestige over the years, as Paris-Brussels and Züri-Metzgete could attest, and the concept of the Monument as we know it today is a wholly modern invention. The importance of a bike race is ultimately determined by the riders present and the emotions inspired. 

Strade Bianche doesn’t need a largely meaningless UCI designation to be considered one of the highlights of the calendar, then, but even so, the final two hours of this year’s event felt more like a sportive than a Monument. There was no narrative drama here, just an exhibition from Pogačar, who won the strongest man competition on Monte Sante Marie and then cruised home from there. 

When Pogačar won his first Strade Bianche in 2022 after a 50km solo effort of disarming nonchalance, it had the feel of an epoch-defining moment. Four years on, that apparent highwater mark has long since been submerged by the wave upon wave of solo Pogačar exhibitions that have washed over the sport. 

Last autumn, Pogačar rounded off his imperious 2025 season with a series of almost absurdly dominant long-range attacks to win the World Championships, the European Championships and Il Lombardia on successive weekends. 

He has started 2026 in precisely the same vein, and he shows no sign of relenting.

For those who enjoy their cycling with a modicum of suspense, this might prove to be a long season. Mathieu van der Poel’s victory at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad last weekend already demonstrated once again that the strongest riders rarely slip up anymore in 2020s cycling, and that point was hammered home by Pogačar at Strade Bianche.

UAE Team Emirates-XRG helped to ensure the strongest man won here by making the race as demanding as possible from as early possible, and the parcours has lent a helping hand in recent years too, as Patrick Lefevere lamented in his Het Nieuwsblad column on Saturday.

Of the biggest races on the calendar, Milan-San Remo, whose subtle route is something of an anachronism in modern cycling, is perhaps the only one whose scales are not tilted firmly in favour of the most powerful rider. And even then, Pogačar’s startling 2025 onslaught suggested that La Primavera’s beguiling magic might eventually have its limitations against his brute force. 

Pogačar’s next outing, of course, is at Milan-San Remo, and on Saturday’s evidence, it would seem foolish to bet against him breaking that hoodoo on the Via Roma in two weeks’ time.

Van der Poel will have a say in that, of course, while those unmoved by the prospect of yet another career year for Pogačar will also take heart from Seixas’ remarkable Strade Bianche debut. Still only 19 years of age, Seixas had the strength and the confidence to reach out and touch the flame when Pogačar launched his winning move, and, most impressively, he had the tactical acumen to pull his hand back before getting burned.

Seixas recovered from that effort on Monte Sante Marie to prove the best of the rest here, attacking in the finale and then dispatching Pogačar’s teammate Isaac del Toro on the Via Santa Caterina. It’s surely a year or more too soon in his development to entertain thoughts of beating Pogačar when they meet again at Liège-Bastogne-Liège in April, but Seixas is that rarity, a rider inspired rather than disheartened by this particular obstacle.

For now, however, Pogačar remains out of reach of everybody in the peloton. His dominance has become routine over the years, but it remains as astonishing and baffling as it ever was. He continues to make the impossible look disarmingly straightforward.

Cyclists, we are constantly told, have never been better trained and have never made more sacrifices in the name of athletic improvement. So-called marginal gains, we are told, are pivotal in a sport increasingly decided by the most minor details. But how do we square all that with Pogačar’s mammoth attacks and outlandish dominance? 

The best rider in the world remains cycling’s biggest draw and its biggest mystery.