A new frontier in rider unity, Pogačar-less unpredictability, and how to honour the rainbow jersey – Reflections from Il Lombardia

I have just returned home to the UK after my first time covering Il Lombardia, and it was certainly a memorable trip. We had a hefty dose of off-the-bike drama, a victory you sense will shape the next decade of the sport, and plenty of feel-good, end-of-season (and also end-of-career) vibes in the golden glow of the sunlight bouncing off the hills around Lake Como.

It was my first time covering The Race of the Falling Leaves, as this race has traditionally been the domain of Cyclingnews' resident adopted-Italian, Stephen Farrand. Well, Stephen has now left for pastures new, and we wish him all the best, as well as thank him for the enormous contribution he's made to CN over the years.

But, somewhat selfishly, his absence does open up certain Italian segments of the calendar, and I leapt at the chance to go to Lombardia. I love going to races I've never been to before, especially ones as big as this.

As the dust settles, I've picked out and written about a few of the things that stood out for me over the weekend. As ever, let us know your own thoughts and reflections in the comments section below.

A new frontier in rider unity

There's only one place to start, and that's the moment the race did not start. The rider protest in Bergamo was a powerful moment, and it felt like a seismic one, too. Don't get me wrong, this won't change things overnight – not by a long stretch – but it did feel like a significant step in the right direction when it comes to the way that riders stand up for their own safety.

First of all, the way this came together was fascinating. I've written a whole feature on this so I won't rehash it all here, but this initiative was spearheaded by two riders, Tom Pidcock and Ben Healy, who rather seamlessly built a working group, orchestrated a consensus, and managed to keep it all within the inner circle of the peloton.

It's quite something that the CPA, the riders' union that exists to facilitate exactly such situations as this, was bypassed entirely. Now, the CPA has made huge strides under Adam Hansen's stewardship and still has an important role to play, but the fact that the Lombardia peloton was able to pull this off outside of the formal channels signalled a new frontier in rider unity.

And the riders will only be emboldened by the success of the whole operation. The feeling within the peloton is one of satisfaction and pride, not only in the way they came together but also how they enacted what was widely seen as a respectful demonstration made in good faith. Certainly, public sentiment seems to be overwhelmingly in support of the riders, and the race organisers, despite telling us they would have preferred things to have played out differently, were ultimately accommodating and supportive.

In that respect, Remco Evenepoel deserves a huge amount of credit. He hadn't prepared a speech when he arrived in Bergamo for the start of the race, but race director Luca Guercilena, when he was informed of the plan, urged someone to say a few words so that the on-site public would understand what was happening.

It was a fair request and Evenepoel stepped up to the plate, putting on the patron's hat, taking the microphone, and delivering a speech that clearly set out what was happening and why. It was a classy, statesmanlike move that will have won the riders a degree of goodwill with the powers-that-be, and in turn will have won Evenepoel enormous respect from his peers.

Ultimately, there is still a long road ahead when it comes to rider safety, and this was only a small gesture in the grand scheme of things, but I sense it has sparked something among the riders and perhaps given them something that has been in short supply recently: a flicker of hope.

Tadej Pogačar's absence highlights glorious inconsistencies

How has the Tadej Pogačar-less autumn been for you? I made the mistake of opening the social media platform formerly known as Twitter after the race and saw numerous takes suggesting this Lombardia was a rather cheap affair without the world's best rider. Granted, this was not the most enthralling edition of the 'Race of the Falling Leaves', and I do understand the sense of disappointment when two of the top favourites – Remco Evenepoel and Isaac del Toro – don't bring their A-game and instead fizzle out in front of our eyes.

But zoom out: aren't we getting what we've been clamouring for at so many other points in the past few years? I don't celebrate Pogačar's injury-enforced absence, but it has undeniably made this autumn swing of one-day races more open, tactical, and entertaining as a purely racing spectacle. What's more, Pogačar has become metronomic in the way he operates. He's never short of pitch-perfect, and that has seemed to colour our understanding of the modern cyclist - programmed to the nines via formulas of watts per kilo and carbohydrates per hour.

'Bring back bonking,' a colleague of mine cried recently. Well, the winner of Il Lombardia cramped dramatically and disastrously at the World Championship two weeks earlier. The runner-up, Enric Mas, has had a miserable couple of years until the past few weeks. The third-place finisher, Giulio Ciccone, once again raced on heart to surpass his limits. Remco Evenepoel in fourth is still wildly inconsistent for a rider who belongs to the very top echelon.

Fifth-placed Brandon McNulty was riding with a new lease of life in the rainbow jersey. Tom Pidcock in sixth is constantly dancing on the line of world-class and not quite world-class. Pello Bilbao was lifted from anonymous form to seventh place by the emotions of riding his final race. I could go on, but I'll jump down to 28th place and the pre-race favourite, Isaac del Toro – another otherworldly young talent who is still prone to the odd lax display.

The point I'm trying to make is that you know exactly what you're getting with Pogačar from one week to the next, but with most of this lot you don't, and there's something fun – and indeed human – about that.

More than one way to honour the rainbow jersey

The world champion’s jersey seems to suit Brandon McNulty, who’s been racing with a refreshing freedom in the rainbow bands these past couple of weeks, and perhaps he has won a few people over already. When the US rider pulled off his stunning Worlds heist, it’s fair to say there was a mixed response, with several high-profile former riders expressing varying degrees of unease at the prospect of the rainbow jersey being deployed largely in a domestique capacity.

This is somewhat understandable. After all, many of us would have described Pogačar as a ‘fitting’ world champion in the past couple of years. But that wording would also imply that there are some riders who are not worthy.

As I see it, there are numerous ways to honour the rainbow jersey, which can stand for more than just ‘being the best rider in the world’. After all, we have a ranking system for that. And what’s more, how many riders in the years before Pogačar have been able to call themselves the undisputed best in such a broad, blanketing way? Pogačar has maybe made us forget about the rainbow jersey’s potential for nuance.

To McNulty’s credit, he hasn’t been burdened by the weight of the jersey, and he hasn’t been sucked into any delusions of grandeur. In the past couple of weeks, he has raced more expansively and fearlessly than he ever has, and he also had no issue returning to that subordinate status even before Pogačar’s return, declaring Del Toro the team’s leader for Lombardia. As it happened, he ended up fifth and Del Toro 28th.

And who says the rainbow jersey can’t work for others? After all, Pogačar did just that on the second stage of the Tour de France, leading out Del Toro for victory, and going on to spend the second half of the race – albeit by then in the yellow jersey – as the most luxurious of domestiques for the Mexican.

It’s early days in the reign, but McNulty is doing things his own way, and reminding us that there are more ways than one to be a world champion.

Paul Seixas' stunning season has a fitting ending 

We started this feature on the startline, and we’ll finish it on the finish line, which was reached before anyone else by Paul Seixas, a 20-year-old phenomenon who became the youngest ever winner not only of this race but of any of cycling’s five Monuments. That statistic only seemed to underline the sense in the Como air that we were witnessing a seminal moment from a future giant of the sport.

Seixas’ season will go down as one of the all-time great breakthrough campaigns. There was enough to get excited about in his 2025 debut season as an 18-year-old, but almost instantly in 2026 he took the huge leap to effectively being one of the top five riders in the world. Best of the rest behind Pogačar at Strade Bianche and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, either side of a complete annihilation of the Itzulia Basque Country field, Seixas’ Spring sent the hype machine into overdrive, and sent him into an unexpectedly early first date with the Tour de France, where he finished fourth at 19.

What happened in the summer was extraordinary – there is absolutely no doubt about that – and yet Il Lombardia felt like Seixas picking where he left off in the Spring. After all, Seixas' Tour de France was mind-boggling on paper, but it was rather more prosaic in practice, with the Frenchman encouraged to rein in his more impulsive, panache-fueled instincts in favour of a more conservative GC grind.

It paid off, and may pay forward again in the coming years, but it was all rather less spectacular than what we saw in the Spring. Likewise, his performances since – beaten by Del Toro at GP de Montréal, cramping out of contention at Worlds – took a touch of the gloss off.

But at Il Lombardia we witnessed something extremely special once again. As others like Evenepoel and Del Toro – both riding with a golden opportunity in Pogačar’s absence – fell away, he rose to the occasion. And he didn’t so much attack as float away, riding the race off his wheel one by one. It was a hell of a statement, and as ever, it was the boldness of the young man that shone through, both in his racing style and the remarkable self-assuredness of his post-race press conference.

Seixas said he doesn’t believe in destiny, but his physicality and personality are propelling him to superstardom, sooner rather than later. In that respect, the Il Lombardia victory was a fitting end to what has arguably been the standout storyline of the season.

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