Without Pogacar, Il Lombardia gets its suspense back

Twelve months ago, Il Lombardia was facing up to a familiar First World problem: the best bike rider in the world kept turning up to the race and winning it. While RCS Sport was undoubtedly glad to have Tadej Pogačar’s star power on the start line, his very presence also divested Il Lombardia of any modicum of suspense.

After crushing victories at the World and European Championships over the previous two weekends, the only real questions were when would Pogačar attack and how much would he win by?

Pogačar duly bludgeoned away on the Passo di Ganda with 38km to go, cruising into Bergamo almost two minutes clear of Remco Evenepoel, who was in turn streets ahead of the rest. As expected, Il Lombardia was essentially a replay of a scenario already seen in Kigali and the Ardèche.

There was a jarring sense of facsimile to the whole afternoon. It was also Pogačar’s fifth successive victory at Il Lombardia, surpassing Fausto Coppi’s record of four straight wins. The course had been reversed and tweaked across that period, and it made little difference. The beat went on, and there was no obvious end in sight for Pogačar’s October reign.

But in cycling, nobody, not even Pogačar, is inured to ill fortune, and the Slovenian’s crash 32km outside Xeraco on stage 8 of the Vuelta a España has altered the dynamic of the final weeks of this season. 

His Vuelta abandon saw Enric Mas shake off years of underachievement to claim the prize. His absence from the Worlds led to an anarchic race in Montreal with a surprise winner in Brandon McNulty. His thwarted plans to return at the European Championships meant that Slovenia was treated to an Evenepoel show.

But the Pogačar-shaped gap at Il Lombardia is arguably the most intriguing change to the rhythm of the final weeks of the season. A Pogačar triumph here had started to feel like an immutable part of Autumn or, at the very least, a reminder to put your clock back.

Pogačar’s absence on Saturday restores Il Lombardia’s old status as an unpredictable Monument, even if the data-driven cycling of the 2020s means that we still have a fair idea of the likely contenders for his crown in Como.

In days of yore, Il Lombardia – or the Giro di Lombardia, in old money – was often a race to be bartered as well as won. It was the only race that Sean Kelly ever admitted to giving away, to Gianbattista Baronchelli and his Del Tongo team in 1986. In 1997, Michele Bartoli’s need for a top four finish to seal the season-long World Cup sparked an informal alliance with winner Laurent Jalabert. 

By the turn of the century, Il Lombardia was largely ignored by the grandees of the peloton. Instead, it was often won either by star riders looking to save their seasons, such as Bartoli or Damiano Cunego, or by cycling Barclaysmen like Mirko Celestino or Oliver Zaugg.

The WorldTour era led to a gradual restoration of its status, with Vincenzo Nibali’s twin triumphs marking the era, while in 2019, Egan Bernal became the first reigning Tour de France champion since Laurent Fignon to line up. Even so, it remained a gloriously open race through the first two seasons of Pogačar’s career, when it wasn’t on the Slovenian’s programme. 

Bauke Mollema clipped away to a smart but surprising win in a high-octane 2019 edition, while Pogačar was in action at the Dauphiné on the day Jakob Fuglsang won the strange, midsummer Il Lombardia in 2020.

But once Pogačar discovered Il Lombardia in 2021, the rest of the gruppo seemed to crumple beneath his wheels like so many fallen leaves. Five editions produced five wins, and even though Pogačar had company at the finish on two occasions, he always had the look of a man in a race of his own.

Without him, the 2026 edition of Il Lombardia promises to be different. The winner will be different, of course, but so too might the style of racing.

Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) is the man most likely to go long like Pogačar, but his sobering experience at the Worlds and his more positive outing at the European Championships show that it’s easier said than done. Although Evenepoel will be on a high after securing the European title, there are riders in the field who have shown they can hang in the same postcode and more in recent weeks.

Isaac del Toro, Pogačar’s deluxe gregario a year ago, leads the line for UAE Team Emirates-XRG, even if questions still linger over his ability across Monument distance. He is flanked by the new world champion McNulty, who will seek to emulate his teammate by becoming only the third man to win Il Lombardia in the rainbow jersey this century. 

McNulty’s compatriot Matteo Jorgenson (Visma Lease a Bike) looks to have hit his best form just as the season is ending. Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) arguably deserved more from his Worlds outing and he will see Il Lombardia as a clear chance to claim the Monument Pogačar denied him in Sanremo in March. The Briton looked sharp at Tre Valli Varesine, but he was also surprised by Jarno Widar (Lotto Intermarché) at the last.

And, of course, Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM) will also believe he can open his Monument account in Como. On the evidence of his lacerating self-assessment after cramping in the finale in Montreal, the youngster won’t be lacking in motivation here.

But the intrigue of a Lombardia without Pogačar is that it will be a race without its usual scaffolding. As we saw in Montreal, that can lead to a freeform race that changes shape at unexpected moments. 

Twelve months ago, Quinn Simmons’ mix of courage and folly saw him attack from distance and he held on for fourth after he was caught and passed by Pogačar in the finale. The arithmetic of such a move changes without Pogačar’s peerless power-to-weight ratio queued up and waiting in the chasing peloton. 

Fortune already favoured the brave at the Worlds in this (temporarily) Pogačar-less cycling world. McNulty’s winning effort in Montreal will have given plenty more food for thought here.