Key Takeaways: 2024 Men's World Road Race Championships

Breaking down how Tadej Pogačar's long-range attack exploited his rival's weaknesses & highlighted just how much the sport has changed in recent seasons

On a challenging circuit in the hills in and around the Swiss city of Zürich on Sunday, Tadej Pogačar continued to re-define what is possible in modern cycling as he rode clear to clinch his first career World Championship after a long-range solo move that was put into motion when he launched a daring attack from over 100 kilometers from the finish line. Behind, even members of the sport’s ultra-elite top tier, like Remco Evenepoel and Mathieu van der Poel, appeared caught off-guard by the audacity of the move and unprepared to manage the gap and getting on terms with Pogačar before things spiraled out of control. Even as Pogačar began to cede time inside the final lap, the elite chase group never appeared like a real threat to reel in the sport’s top star, mainly due to intense in-fighting between its top stars, which allowed Australia’s Ben O’Connor to slip off the front to take a hugely unexpected second place and forced the defending champion, Van der Poel, to settle for third.

As the dust has settled on the stunning performance, it has become clear that Pogačar’s ride on Sunday was legacy-defining, in part due to seeing him become only the third rider of all-time (after Eddy Merckx and Stephen Roche) to complete the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and World Championship Triple Crown and adding to his already absurd count of 23 wins in 2024, but mainly due to just how much it exposed a gulf in physical ability, confidence, and tactical instinct between himself and the others in the top-tier. I’ve broken down three key takeaways from the dominant ride on the Zürich circuit below:

2024 Men’s World Championship Road Race Top Ten:
1) Tadej Pogačar (Slovenia) +0
2) Ben O'Connor (Australia) +34
3) Mathieu van der Poel (Netherlands) +58
4) Toms Skujiņš (Latvia) +58
5) Remco Evenepoel (Belgium) +58
6) Marc Hirschi (Switzerland) +58
7) Ben Healy (Ireland) +1’00
8) Enric Mas (Spain) +1’01
9) Quinn Simmons (United States) +2’18
10) Romain Bardet (France) +2’18

World Championship Road Race 2024 Race Notebook

126.4km-to-go: An elite group, which includes Pogačar’s Slovenian teammate Jan Tratnik, rides clear after a flurry of attacks and quickly joins the early breakaway. This, at least theoretically, presents a potential problem for Pogačar and his quickly disappearing Slovenian team support.

101.9km: A significant increase in pace has burned through the Slovenian team and left Tadej Pogačar with only two Slovenians, Domen Novak (also Pogačar’s UAE teammate) and Primož Roglič, to hold the race together for the remaining 100 kilometers. Sensing weakness, outside contenders start attacking. The breakaway, which includes Tratnik, is just over two minutes ahead.

100.8km: With Quinn Simmons dangling just a few meters off the front after an attack, Pogačar, who now just has Roglič (on the front) as support and his two main rivals Mathieu van der Poel and Remco Evenepoel out of position, senses an opportunity to turn the tables on his rivals by attacking to bridge up to the breakaway, which includes his Slovenian teammates Jan Tratnik. This also turns a threat, the breakaway, into an asset.

100.8km cont.: In the blink of an eye, Pogačar attacks up to Simmons before blowing by him.

100.7km: While Simmons is able to hold his wheel and Andrea Bagioli is able to drag himself even with the two, the difference in effort between the rest of the field, who appear to be on the limit, and Pogačar, who looks like he is barely pushing, is obvious. Pogačar looks back and almost looks disappointed as he realizes no other favorite can follow and that he will now have to ride clear from over 100 kilometers out in order to keep his rivals from endlessly attacking him.

99.5km: Just over a kilometer after the attack, Pogačar already has a 14-second gap on the peloton, which is still being led by pre-race favorites like Healy, who are trying desperately to bridge across instead of the two mega-teams of Evenepoel and Van der Poel.

99km: The gravity of the situation is made even clearer half a kilometer later when Pogačar has increased his gap to 22 seconds (which is even more dangerous when we consider that he is riding toward a teammate stashed up the road). Meanwhile, the peloton is still being led by solo riders attempting to bridge while the teams of Evenepoel and Van der Poel are still sitting back.

97.2km-95.5km: By the time he hits the top of the climb, Pogačar has pulled his gap out to 30 seconds, and when he makes contact with his teammate Tratnik on the rolling section before the descent, they have a 47-second gap while Pogačar looks incredibly strong and is closing in on the breakaway.

89.8km: Back in the peloton, Belgium has finally coalesced at the front, but with Pogačar now nearly a minute in the lead and securely in the breakaway group with a fairly fresh Tratnik and two UAE trade teammates (Jay Vine and Pavel Sivakov), their hesitation has cost them and the race for the win is already over.

78.6km: The Belgian-led chase gets the gap down to 33 seconds after Pogačar sits in the breakaway group for the downhill and flat portion of the circuit, but as soon as they return to the steep slopes of the Bergstrasse climb Pogačar attacks, knowing that he has a small window of opportunity to blow that gap back open to avoid being reeled in by the chasers.

78.1km-72.2km: Pogačar’s move immediately drops all but American Kevin Vermaerke and Frenchman Pavel Sivakov, but, by the top of the climb, only a Sivakov remains, and only due to the generosity of Pogačar, who sits up to wait for his trade teammate, likely in the hope that he will be able to offer a few turns at the front. Pogačar has blown his gap back to 53 seconds.

72.1km: Any hope of a re-grouping is killed when Evenepoel attempts an impossible solo bridge up to Pogačar by attacking the group. This kills any cohesion since everyone in the group will now be hesitant to share work duties for fear of being attacked and dropped by Evenepoel.

53.1km: After a dizzying series of events, when Van der Poel counters one of Evenepoel’s failed attacks and jumps clear himself by jumping onto a crowded sidewalk, Evenepoel’s frustration behind as he finds himself unable to drop the American riders on his wheel, Quinn Simmons (riding perhaps the best race of his life) and Matteo Jorgenson, and they, in turn, refuse to work with him to reel in Pogačar, the now-escaped Ben Healy and Toms Skujiņš and the dangling Van der Poel group. The gap to Pogačar is 52 seconds, while Healy/Skujiņš are 13 seconds up the road.

51.5km-16.4km: Pogačar drops Sivakov on the next pass of the Bergstrasse before pushing his gap over a minute to Healy/Skujiņš and nearly 1.5 to the Evenepoel/Van der Poel peloton. However, after reeling in the chase group, the Van der Poel/Evenepoel group gets within 39 seconds of Pogačar as they descend to the finish line on the last lap.

9.3km-2.3km: Once together, the chase group loses its pace as Van der Poel and Evenepoel begin attacking one another. This allows Pogačar to re-extend his gap out to 52 seconds and all but seal his victory.

1.4km: Taking advantage of the Evenepoel/Van der Poel duel, Ben O’Connor clips off the front right before heading into the final kilometer and rides as hard as he can toward a potential medal.

Finish: Pogačar crosses the finish line to cap off an absurdly impressive performance as O’Connor crosses just 34 seconds later for a surprise second place, and Van der Poel wins the slow-speed sprint for third nearly a minute behind.

Three Key Takeaways

1) Tadej Pogačar’s Long-Range Attack May Have Looked Absurd, but It Actually Minimized Risk & Saved Him From a Potentially Tricky Situation: I will spend more time in the coming weeks attempting to contextualize the achievements of Tadej Pogačar’s 2024 season, which, even in its incomplete nature at this point, appears to be one of the most dominant and impressive runs from a rider in the history of the sport. But, in the immediate aftermath of this World title, his ride on Sunday in Zürich highlighted not only his marginal physical superiority over his rivals but the massive gulf in race craft and instinct.

• At first glance, Pogačar attacking from 100 kilometers out might appear overly risky and even unnecessary. However, in many ways, due to his supreme physiological gifts and current fitness, it minimized risk and solved many potential problems before they even arose.

  • For example, getting out in front of the race allowed Pogačar to avoid the tactical games that his rivals, mainly Evenepoel and Van der Poel, found themselves in later in the race (and which allowed Ben O’Connor to sneak off the front for second place).

    • In the blink of an eye, he went from being isolated in a peloton full of rivals with stronger, more complete teams with a dangerous move riding clear and no teammates remaining to control it—to being off the front with a relatively fresh teammate as his rivals helplessly scrambled behind.

    • Also, Evenepoel being so far out of position heading into the climb likely played into Pogačar’s decision-making since he likely assumed that he would be able to ride clear with a small, strong group willing to work with him as Evenepoel was forced to burn through his teammates behind.

      • So, even if Pogačar were reeled in later in the race, he would be facing a chase-depleted and isolated Evenepoel.

        • What he likely didn’t foresee was that nobody would be able to follow his move and that he would be forced to ride so much of the final 100 kilometers alone, but, due to the awareness to keep riders from the breakaway with him as long as possible and his incredible physical gifts, this wasn’t an insurmountable problem.

          • Like great teams and players in other sports, Pogačar can recognize the moment his rivals let their guard down and immediately exploit even the slightest opening.

  • And, considering how Pogačar needed multiple passes of the Bergstrasse and the ensuing gradual climb to the high part of the course to drop Pavel Sivakov, part of the calculation that he and his Slovenian team made was that it was worthwhile to empty the tank early on by setting an extremely hard pace with four times up the major climb remaining to avoid running out of runway to make the race hard enough to drop his rivals on the relatively short climbs (like Vollering in the Women’s race the day prior) by waiting too late in the race.

2) Pogačar’s Unique Physiology Gives Him Options Other Riders Simply Don’t Have: Of course, this “go long” option is great if you have the means and ability, but it is only available to Pogačar due to his nearly peerless physical profile, which allows him to sustain massive amounts of power with a relatively low amount of mass for long periods of time. In particular, his high functional threshold power and naturally light build that doesn’t force him to sacrifice strength to meet his goal race weight means he can simply ride clear of strong groups on difficult courses.

• In his recent interview with Dr. Peter Attia, Pogačar said his Zone 2 power (essentially what he can ride all day) is between 320w-340w on 20-minute climbs, which means his threshold power (what he can ride for an hour) is roughly 460w (7w/kg at his stated weight of 65kgs).

  • This means that when he hit the climb on Sunday, he could push over 7w/kg for each of the roughly 15-minute climbing periods, before settling into a ‘recovery’ pace of around 400 watts on the flats.

    • The ability to push such a high watts per kilograms on the climbs, while settling into such a high sustained raw power on the flats, is incredibly unique (most top riders are either heavy/strong or ultra-light/lacking the raw power on the flats) and means he is nearly impossible to reel in once he gets clear.

      • In fact, in his 20 non-GC wins in 2024, 16 of those have come via a solo attack, and, with his only failed attempt coming on Stage 11 of the Tour de France when Jonas Vingegaard reeled him in.

• One byproduct of Pogačar’s ability to make the race hard before launching long-range moves is that it is contributing to the nearly unprecedented era of just a few big-name stars dominating major one-day races.

  • For example, in the 12 biggest one-day races over the last two seasons (9 Monuments + 2 WCs + 1 Olympics), only four riders have taken wins, with three of them being generational talents and part of cycling’s ultra-elite top tier, with the other being Van der Poel's teammate and the sport’s best sprinter.

    • Even inside this elite group, wins cluster between Van der Poel and Pogačar, with 75% of the wins spread between them.

      • Mathieu van der Poel (5 wins)

      • Tadej Pogačar (4 wins)

      • Remco Evenepoel (2 wins)

      • Jasper Philipsen (1 win)

  • One of the major reasons for this drastic shift is that wins can only come from a handful of riders who can physically match the extreme power requirements this type of “go-long” racing demands.

3) Pogačar’s Rivals Lost the Race in the First 10 Kilometers After The Attack: Despite his two biggest rivals, Van der Poel and Evenepoel, knowing that Pogačar has won his last three Monuments with solo moves, and that he has 26 solo wins over just the last two seasons, they were woefully out of position and caught seemingly unprepared when he launched his winning move on the Bergstrasse.

• This somewhat baffling mistake was compounded when Evenepoel’s Belgian squad appeared to fail to take the situation seriously (or weren’t aware that Pogačar had attacked due to the lack of race radios) in the kilometers directly after the attack.

  • Once they finally hit the front, they had spotted the world’s best rider nearly a minute, and the race was over with 90 kilometers left to race.

    • Van der Poel and Evenepoel also appeared to fall prey to one of the recurring themes of Pogačar’s solo wins by thinking they could simply park a few domestiques on the front and make inroads into Pogačar’s lead. Sure, they may have taken back 20-ish seconds in the second half of the lap after Pogačar’s attack, but they ceded it all back, and more, as soon as the course titled up. 

      • At this point, it should be clear that the only hope riders caught behind Pogačar have is race favorites coming forward themselves to work in unison almost as soon as the move is launched.

  • While we may never know exactly how and why his rivals looked so unprepared to respond to Pogačar's long-range attack, it is worth noting that his unmatched confidence in his ability to ride clear, despite being forced to set the pace for the vast majority of the final 100 kilometers, is so high that he can make even members of the ultra-elite top tier look like amateurs as they miss moves and struggle to form a cohesive chase behind due to needing to draft, find ways to conserve energy and generally race with a generally reasonable and logical strategy.