A rare return to unpredictability as no Tadej Pogačar at Il Lombardia opens the door to the same anarchy as Worlds – Analysis

In the 25 Monument Classics since Tadej Pogačar won his first of cycling's oldest, most prestigious and hardest one-day races at Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2023, 19 of the victories have been shared only by him and Mathieu van der Poel, with just seven different winners.

The five other champions in that period are far from complete shocks: Remco Evenepoel twice, Wout van Aert, Matej Mohorič, Jasper Philipsen, and Dylan van Baarle.

All more than 230km in length and offering up some of the most attritional routes seen on the cycling calendar, the Monuments have long been where the preeminent riders rise to the top, but even the era immediately preceding the arrival of Pogačar pointed to more of a democracy than the almost total duopoly we've been watching for the past four seasons.

In the 25 Monument Classics before Pogačar sprinted to that maiden title in Liège, there were 22 different winners across Milan-San Remo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Liège, and Il Lombardia, with only Jakob Fuglsang, Vincenzo Nibali, and Phillipe Gilbert as repeat champions in that time frame, and considerably more riders in play for the wins.

As 2026 nears the final of the five, Il Lombardia, on Saturday, the racing should briefly be returned to the less predictable and – if the World Championships men's road race was anything to go by – almost completely lawless racing largely unseen since the Slovenian has established a vice grip on the majority of major races.

Just as San Remo was for Eddy Merck, Roubaix was for Roger De Vlaeminck, and Lombardy was for Fausto Coppi, Pogačar has made one of the five his particular playground of choice, and that has been the northern Italian race, matching the latter's record of five victories as he completely destroyed the field 12 months ago to maintain his perfect record.

And anything but the sixth arriving this Autumn, and Italy's greatest rider being overtaken 72 years after he set what seemed like an unbreakable record, would've been one of the shocks of the season, no matter who was on the start list.

But even Pogačar – despite his miraculous ability to avoid major injuries for the large majority of his career – is not invincible, and the most important crash in terms of impact all season, which left him concussed and with a fractured collarbone and vertebrae at the Vuelta a España, has changed the complexion of what likely would've otherwise been another tension-less Il Lombardia.

The power vacuum

Throughout his reign of five wins, the Slovenian has only grown more dominant as the years went on, too, winning his first two titles from two-up sprints against Fausto Masnada and Enric Mas – who showed the world exactly how to step into the void left by Pogačar as he soared to the Vuelta a España GC title last month, Spain's first for 12 years.

But the unchanged variable of his perfect record has been UAE controlling the race on the approach to whatever the key climb is on the route, and preventing any of the previous chaos, randomness, and masterclasses at the eleventh hour of the season which long punctuated Lombardias gone by into the 2020s – shown best by the list of former winners – from developing.

In truth, Pogačar is so superior that UAE haven't needed to rely on overly nuanced tactics whether heading to Bergamo or Como, instead just setting a brutal tempo before launching him into the final 30-50km, and to three solo wins at the last three editions – winning by 0:52 in 2023, a massive 3:16 in 2024, and 1:48 last season.

The runner-up in those latter two was Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), who seems the obvious successor on paper. However, as everyone saw at Worlds in Montreal, where that same theory was tested, the Belgian star is significantly less of a guarantee than his contemporary.

What became clear in Canada is that the gap between Pogačar and the rest is much greater than that of the rest to each other, with Evenepoel likely starting on a par with UAE's leaders Isaac del Toro and World Champion Brandon McNulty, Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM), Tom Pidcock (Pinarello Q36.5), Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek), and Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike).

Evenepoel going solo seemed likely before he was brought back down to earth in Canada, and while he can try to just follow the moves and somewhat rely on his sprint, the millimetres and controversial photo finish that saw him snatch the European title from Ciccone's grasp leave cause for nerves to creep in.

Pogačar's brute force approach is what benefitted the Belgian most, particularly last year, with the earlier and earlier opening up of races ruling out anyone from even attempting to beat the UAE rider tactically.

But thinking he can match that as the instigator could prove fatal for Evenepoel and Red Bull's chances, as it's easy to forget what the reigning champion has normalised when it comes to solo attacking, often matching records set by Merckx and Coppi with his daring, but now expected moves.

With that should come what was true of Worlds: a war of attrition being matched by a total tactical battle, where the numbers game may prove as vital as it did for McNulty and the USA en route to rainbows. Evenepoel's greatest asset may end up not being his ability to solo or sprint, but whether Primož Roglič or Giulio Pellizzari can make it into the leading split to add more strings to his attacking bow, and the same can be said of UAE, who are probably still starting with the strongest team.

McNulty and the US showed everyone the blueprint for how to win a Pogačar-less race at Worlds, and it was actually his compatriot Quinn Simmons who came closest to upsetting the usual flow of Lombardy a year ago when he made an all-out assault on the course from the early breakaway.

UAE and Pogačar hoovered him up eventually, of course, and he faded to fourth by the time the race reached the finish, but knowing that the bullet from behind won't be anywhere near as threatening compared to the inevitability of the Slovenian, it could cause the early break to return as a genuine method to victory.

Don't be surprised to see the stars and stripes of Simmons and several others all on the move to try and get ahead of Evenepoel, Del Toro and Seixas, as anticipation becomes genuinely threatening again. However, this would be returning cycling to an even older era if someone were able to pull it off, and the difficulty of the route cannot be sniffed at with 4,845m of elevation gain packed into the 243km.

Mollema in 2019 provides the blueprint

It feels like a lifetime ago that George Bennett was battling away with the Astana duo of Fuglsang and Aleksandr Vlasov until the last 6km of the COVID-19-rescheduled 2020 edition in August of that year, or since Bauke Mollema's well-timed move in the last 20km of the 2019 race saw him emerge victorious ahead of a group of closely matched climbing stars like Roglič, Egan Bernal, and Alejandro Valverde.

What was then an attainable goal for many, Il Lombardia became unwinnable in the years that followed for 99% of the peloton, and the same can largely be said of the other four Monuments. But with the door now open in Pogačar's absence, perhaps the biggest surprise win since Mohorić in San Remo in 2022 is around the corner – and even then San Remo has long stood as the most unpredictable of the five, so that run of predictable winners likely stretches back even further.

Despite their importance in the context of cycling's history and Pogačar's place as an all-time great, the past three editions could have been an email in reality, with everyone, including his rivals, without wanting to admit it, knowing who was going to win barring major incidents.

With the Slovenian returning to action in 2027, it may be the only chance some riders get to win a Monument for the next six years [when his newly-signed contract ends], so they must grasp it with both hands.

Few outcomes would be as compelling as Evenepoel emerging victorious, though, six years on from the horror crash off a bridge which left him seriously injured and leaving the race in an ambulance. But it's hard to see anything but an incredibly complex race play out for the Belgian, so he will have to thrive amid the adversity as he did at the Euros and several races before. If he does succeed, the outpouring of emotion should be cathartic.

Mollema will start Saturday's race as the oldest rider at 39, before his retirement, and it's his method to victory which looks most likely: all the big names together in the last 30km, before someone makes the right opportunistic move, and perhaps that could come from Evenepoel, or Seixas, the youngest man on the start line. This Saturday's race and a return to a more open Il Lombardia won't be one to miss.

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