“It’s a tough one to crack,” Tadej Pogačar said of Milan-Sanremo, 17 hours before he met his nemesis once again, the race that keeps on obdurately resisting him, thwarting him each and every year. They, one part rivals and one part admirers in the peloton, said in his desperate attempt to win the season’s first Monument, the Slovenian would go long, try to cause chaos as far as 100km before the Via Roma – race tactics never before imagined, let alone tried – and he said he’d let rip on the Cipressa. Not since March 1996, two-and-a-half years before Tadej Pogačar was even born, has any Milan-Sanremo attack been successful 24km out.

But the world champion is bold, aggressive, tenacious, bloody fun. Out of the slipstream of Jhonatan Narváez, 24km out, and boom, he was away. That familiar wrestle of his bike, his centre of gravity leaning over his handlebars, the green Hulk on his frame bursting out of the carbon, roaring into life. He was opening fissures, splitting the uncrackable, doing what everyone said he would, but no one knew if it would be successful.

Except he wasn’t truly away. 

This article was published on Rouleur during Milan-Sanremo 2025. To read the full article click here.