Cycling World Cup: Pogacar and the overtaking of Eventapoel

He also chose to run the chronometer of the World Cup in Rwanda. Tadej Pogacar had never shone in the world championship tests against time: best placement 6th in 2022. But this time he had thought that, yes, it could be a good opportunity to take at least one medal, if not really to go back to the online test. Eh, because Pogacar is so, unpredictable, always looking for new challenges and new limits. Moreover, in a season in which he arrives second on the Paris-Roubaix pavé, on his debut in the Queen of the Classics, and the victory is not played only because it ends up in a curve on the right, why not try? Who knows if all these things have passed in the mind of Pogacar the unbeatable, the phenomenon of the phenomena of contemporary cycling: to make the comparisons with him, now only Fausto Coppi and Eddy Merckx are taken. Yet in his green jersey of the Slovenian national team, after 10 km of Kigali’s world champion, Pogacar the unbeatable understood that he would not end as he hoped.

outcotic

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Indeed, it ended even worse, beyond the very pulled smile and the compliments that he made at the finish to Remco Evenepoel. 2 km from the arrival, on the Wall in Pavé di Kimihurura, 1300 meters at 6.3% with tips of 11%, Pogacar sees the eye shirt behind him behind him, the bike and the golden helmet of the Flemish, who left 2’30 “after him. Unthrantible only to imagine him, as if Alcaraz Double Sinner, for example. Left, it exceeds it, and goes away, a dot that then disappears after the curves. The black day of his career, for how he developed. Challenge between phenomena, more than between champion. Pogacar today celebrated 27 years old: only this season he won the fourth Tour de France, the third Liegi-Bastogne-Riegi, the second round of Flanders, the third white roads. Evenepel is two years old, comes from a complicated season, in December he had hit the door of a Van delle Poste Belghe in training left unleashedly open. He wanted the redemption to the tour, he wanted the yellow jersey in the trial of Caen, fifth stage, but he had wasted time on previous days, and only the satisfaction of beating Pogacar for 16 “had remained in a 33 km chrono: half a second per kilometer. But he could not be enough for a champion born on the football fields, captain of the Belgian national team under 15, who sees the world always rotating around him. At the Paris 2024 Olympiad, road and chrono.

And three

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The World Cup in Rwanda had prepared it from winter, when he had vaccinated in order not to risk anything in Africa. Today his most beautiful day in the specialty in which he is unbeatable: Pippo Ganna has also folded in the platto time trial at very high speed. The third gold in a row in the time trial is his, and he served it with that overtaking in Pogacar uphill, on the pavé, which multiplied his forces when the lactic acid was attacking the muscles. Yes: on the stone walls, Pogacar had detached Van der Poel and Van Aert to win the lap of Flanders twice. Today, swallowed on the saddle, even ugly to see why it had happened to us, he collected the most striking defeat. He had decided to run the time trial, he knew that Eventapoel had a hungry desire for success, yet the Slovenian went down to the arena. He could not do it, he could only think about the test on Sunday, a massacring path of over 5300 meters in altitude. He thought of the consecutive encore. He thought. Evenepotel permitting.