Cycling: Tadej Pogacar wins his fourth Tour of Lombardy in a row and makes history a little more

Tadej Pogacar est trop fort pour ses adversaires. MAXPPP – JASPER JACOBS

Tadej Pogacar est trop fort pour ses adversaires. LaPresse

Le Slovène s'est imposé à Côme, en Italie, après avoir attaqué à 48 km de l'arrivée. 

Insolently easy, Tadej Pogacar won his fourth consecutive Tour of Lombardy in Como on Saturday, equalling Fausto Coppi's record, after another solo ride that concludes a monumental season.

The Slovenian attacked 48.5 km from the finish to solo his 25th victory in 2024, his second in a Monument this year after Liège-Bastogne-Liège, with more than three minutes ahead of the Belgian Remco Evenepoel.

Only one rider, the Italian sprinter Alessandro Pettacci, had won as much in a season in the 21st century, in 2005. As expected – and feared by the entire peloton – the world champion, molded into white shorts and highly acclaimed at the start in Bergamo, placed his attack on the difficult Sormano pass after a final big relay by his teammate at UAE, Pavel Sivakov.

One acceleration was enough

He accelerated just as the group of favourites caught up with the last survivors of the morning breakaway, which consisted of around twenty riders, including four French riders (Rudy Molard, Julien Bernard, Bastien Tronchon, Rémy Rochas). The show had barely started and was already over. In a scene seen and reviewed in recent months, no one even tried to follow the Slovenian, who quickly dug out a substantial advantage, tipping over the top with more than a minute's lead over his first pursuers.

Pogacar further increased his lead in the last forty kilometres to win the 7th Monument of his career, with more than three minutes' lead over Evenepoel, whose first podium this is in Lombardy, and more than four minutes over the Italian Guilio Ciccone.

With this new triumph in the “classic of the dead leaves”, which allows him to equal the performance achieved by the “Campionissimo” Fausto Coppi between 1946 and 1949, Pogacar majestically concluded one of the greatest seasons in the history of cycling. Winner of the Tour de France, the Giro, the World Championships, the Strade Bianche, the Tour of Catalonia, the Tour of Emilia, the Grand Prix of Montreal and two Monuments, the 26-year-old Slovenian has won nine of the 11 events he has started in 2024, adding sixteen stage victories.

The only rider with two Grand Tours, the World Championship and a Monument

Aged 26, he is the only rider to have won the Tour, the Giro, the World Championships and at least one Monument in the same year, a name that groups together the five biggest classics on the calendar (Milan-Sanremo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Tour of Lombardy).