It was an unexpected and heavy blow for Slovenia's Tadej Pogačar, who struggled through the elite men's individual time trial and was caught on the final climb by three-time winner from Belgium Remco Evenepoel on Sunday in Kigali, Rwanda.
All eyes were on the rivalry between the two powerful riders ahead of this event, but it was Pogačar who appeared to suffer through the opening checkpoints, losing time to Evenepoel and his other competitors at each mark of the challenging parcours that finished at the Kigali Convention Centre.
Pogačar started the time trial two and a half minutes ahead of Evenepoel, but lost time to the Belgian at the checkpoints, indicating early on that he was not having his best performance.
Evenepoel, who was on an exceptional ride, had Pogačar insight on the flatter sections before the last climb, and caught and passed him along the final cobbled ascent of the Côte de Kimihurura with roughly one kilometre remaining, and while he tried to stay with the Belgian, he eventually lost ground and ended up finishing 2:37 back in fourth place.
"For sure, it was a hard one to swallow, but he's Remco, and he is so good in this discipline. I hope that he prepared 100% for this discipline today and that he will be 99% ready for next Sunday," Pogačar said.
"I saw that I was just one second from the podium, and that is bittersweet. If I knew that I was only one second off, in the last kilometre, maybe I would have a bit of extra motivation, but I didn't know, and today I will probably regret it. Tomorrow is a new day, and I can be happy with how I suffered today," Pogačar said.
It was also Pogačar's 27th birthday, and so not the gift he would have been hoping for, on that, he said, "This year, I don't want to spoil myself to win today, so let's try to win on Sunday."
The men's field took on a 40.6km course, at 1,450 metres of altitude, that included four climbs; twice over the Côte de Nyanza with 2.5km at 5.8% on the way out and 4.1km at 3.1% on the way back toward the finish. They had another climb over the Côte de Peage and then the last climb of the cobbled Côte de Kimihurura, which is 1.3km at 6.3% and will also be used on the city circuits during the road races later in the week.
Pogačar looked immediately to be off the pace, down on his trade teammate Isaac Del Toro at the first time check, while Evenepoel swung the other way, taking 44 seconds off the Mexican’s best time at that point.
Things didn’t get better after that. At the second time check, Pogačar shipped more time, dropping over 25 seconds to another trade teammate, Vine, who was putting down an impressive negative split to ride arguably the best time trial of his career.
By the time the third intermediate time check arrived the result that Pogačar desired had already slipped out of his grip, but the worst was yet to come for the ebullient Slovenian, who was able to beat Evenepoel in the stage 12 time trial at the Tour de France, though it later transpired the Soudal-QuickStep man was suffering from illness (he withdraw on stage 14).
The image of Evenepoel catching and passing the four-time Tour de France winner not on the flat, as might have been expected, given the relative strengths of the two riders by comparison, but on the cobble Côte de Kimihurura climb, was startling and unexpected, and came to define the day, in which Evenepoel delivered on expectation, while Pogačar fell spectacularly short.
Pogačar suggested that his time trial performance was lacking because of his decision to travel to Canada to race the double WorldTour events in Quebec and Montreal, where he finished second. He said that while racing there lent well to his preparation for the elite men's road race in Kigali, he also missed an important block of time trial training.
He faced a thorough questioning by the media post-race and spoke with his usual brand of good humour, but it was clear that despite today’s perceived setback, Pogačar’s sights are set on next Sunday’s road race, where he will line up as the defending champion.
"It's really nice parcours and I wanted to have really good legs to have a really good position as well, because the downhills were very important today, the high speed sections and really fast roads. We are at altitude, which really plays the effects, too. It was really fast but also an elevation to do on the course," Pogačar said.
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