Few riders in the world have beaten Tadej Pogačar in a head-to-head competition this year, but one British man crossed the line ahead of the world champion this weekend: Andrew Feather.
Granted, the 'race' was Pogačar's eponymous 'Pogi Challenge' - a mass-start ride held on Sunday in his hometown, Komenda, less than 24 hours after the Slovenian decimated his competition in Il Lombardia.
The 23 kilometre race began all together, but Pogačar waited some six minutes before picking off rider after rider on the 13.9-kilometre Krvavec climb to the finish.
Latest Videos From
In the peloton, 40-year-old British lawyer emerged as the only participant not passed by Pogačar before the summit.
Feather had a generous head start on Pogačar, having dropped all of the other 900 starters within the first few minutes of the climb, and held off the UAE Team Emirates-XRG superstar by over two minutes.
"I kept on looking over my shoulder thinking he was going to come up at some point, but he didn't – he didn't manage to catch me," Feather said to Cycling Weekly.
"There were literally thousands of people at the end - everyone came out to watch him in action. He probably wanted to cross the line first, so I felt slightly guilty that I took that away from him."
Feather might be an amateur but he is a four-time UK hill-climb champion. He averaged approximately 400 watts or 6.2W/kg on the climb but was still much slower than Pogačar.
"He was about two and a half minutes quicker than that, so he must have been doing probably close to 7 W/kg," he said.
"It just shows you that he's a completely different class, but it's amazing just to have that absolute direct comparison to the best rider at the moment in the world, maybe ever as well."
Pogačar took the 'defeat' with grace, saying, "I tried to catch everyone, but I couldn't," on the Tour 202 podcast. "Hats off to the winner."
