Key Takeaways: Strade Bianche
Breaking down key highlights & takeaways from a stunningly impressive solo performance on the beautiful white gravel roads of Tuscany
On the picturesque yet challenging white gravel roads of Tuscany on Saturday, Tadej Pogačar asserted his dominance as the sport's premier one-day rider by boldly launching a solo attack over 80 kilometers from the finish line to win Strade Bianche ahead of Toms Skujiņš and Maxim van Gils by sticking the longest successful solo attack in a WorldTour-level one-day race in the modern history of the sport. Outside of showcasing his unparalleled one-day prowess and securing his second Strade Bianche victory in two appearances, the performance functioned as a shot across the bow of the sport’s other Big Six by signaling he has entered the 2024 season prepared to add to his already impressive one-day Monument tally, as well as tackle the herculean task of the Giro-Tour double later in the year.
To expand on my initial Strade Bianche post-race thoughts, I’ve broken down the key takeaways from the Italian one-day race below:
*Premium subscribers will receive a breakdown of the opening stages of Paris-Nice and Tirreno–Adriatico late Tuesday/early Wednesday
Strade Bianche Race Notebook:
93.2km-to-go: Tadej Pogačar, who we can see pulling gels/food out of his pockets to fuel while everyone else is on the limit, has his extremely strong UAE team on the front, setting a very hard pace, very far from the finish line on one of the race’s biggest gravel climbs. With Pogačar burning so much of his team this early in the race, it is already clear that he is planning to attack from a very long way out.
81km: Toward the rolling top of the following climb, Pogačar, now out of teammates and sensing the rest of the peloton is on its limit, attacks. In theory, Pogačar should consider slightly easing up at the top of the climb (like Toms Skujins last weekend at Omloop) to see if he can pick up any riders willing to pull with him for the remaining two hours of racing.
80.9km: But, Pogačar clearly realizes that general cycling theory doesn’t apply to him, and by the time he crests the top of the climb moments later, he already has an eight-second gap on the chasers and shows no signs of slowing up.
42.4km: Despite logic telling us that attacking with 40% of the race still to race is difficult, Pogačar appears to actually benefit from it since the chase group, after a few strong efforts from Ben Healy, fails to mount an organized chase, and instead, as if they were the front group, not a chase group, settles into cagey racing for second. Lotto-Dsnty, more than happy to compete for a podium place, uses their incredibly strong younger Lennert van Eetvelt to attack the group in an attempt to force a small group off the front.
42.2km: The start-stop pace behind allows Pogačar to build up a massive 3+ gap to the chase group in a shockingly short amount of time.
28.1km: With Lotto’s Maxim van Gils 30 seconds off the front of the extremely fatigued main peloton/chase group, Toms Skujins is eventually able to open up a gap and rides off the front in an attempt to bridge to van Gils.
18.5km: After Skujins rides clear, the pace in what is left of the main peloton completely falls off a cliff due to the toll of the constant attacking, and, with Van Gils now over a minute ahead, Tom Pidcock realizes he has missed the final call for the podium and sets off in pursuit.
4.5km: Skujins and Van Gils, working well together (and still not putting a dent into Pogačar’s lead), are able to hold their minute+ advantage on the hard-chasing Tom Pidcock.
Finish: Pogačar ambles up the incredibly steep climb through Siena into the packed Piazza del Campo to soak in his historic effort, which saw him get his second Strade win in his last two starts and stick the longest solo race-winning attack in a WorldTour one-day race in modern history (a full 25 kilometers longer than Philippe Gilbert’s race-winning move at the 2017 Tour of Flanders).
Strade Bianche 2024 Top Ten:
1) Tadej Pogačar (UAE) +0
2) Toms Skujiņš (Lidl-Trek) +2’44
3) Maxim van Gils (Lotto-Dstny) +2:47
4) Tom Pidcock (Ineos) +3:50
5) Matej Mohorič (Bahrain-Victorious) +4’26
6) Benoît Cosnefroy (Decathlon-AG2R) +4’39
7) Davide Formolo (Movistar) +4’41
8) Lenny Martinez (Groupama-FDJ) +4’48
9) Filippo Zana (Jayco-Alula) +4’49
10) Christophe Laporte (Visma-Lease a Bike) +5’17
Five Key Takeaways
1) Tadej Pogačar: The 25-year-old Slovenian won his second Strade in the last three years (and won his fourth-straight season-opening race), with a long-range attack to win this race that was mind-bending for fans, and likely somewhat chilling for his key rivals. His UAE team clearly made a decision very early to use their extremely strong team to wind up the pace from extremely far out in an effort to launch Pogačar on a climb that suited him and eliminate any variables as early as possible.
This might have appeared reckless and unnecessary, but with a rider as strong as Pogačar, it was actually the course of action that maximized his chances of winning since it pitted a fatigued chase group against the world’s best one-day racer on terrain that suited him incredibly well. Once Pogačar was clear, the chase group simply lacked the firepower to hold him steady, let alone reel him in.
Also, by getting out in front of the race, Pogačar essentially ironed out any variables that could get between him and victory since, once he had a 3+ minute gap, he could suffer a flat or non-serious crash and have plenty of time to re-mount and push on to the win.
And, with a team car behind him and able to give him constant food/drink, being solo in front of the race actually decreases the odds of a bonk.
Interestingly, despite possessing a very capable sprint finish, if we look at Pogačar’s biggest one-day wins over the last 24 months, they have all come via long-range solo moves, which shows he and his UAE team clearly believe this is the most efficient way to produce victories.
Pogačar Major One-day Solo Victories Since March 2022
2024 Strade Bianche: 81.1km solo
2023 Il Lombardia: 31km solo
2023 Amstel Gold Race: 28.2km solo
2023 Tour of Flanders: 17km solo2022 Strade Bianche: 49.2km solo
These wins, along with his five career Monument wins and 11 major one-day wins since 2021, Pogačar has cemented his status as the sport’s top one-day rider.
While it would be easy to pencil him in for a third Tour de France overall victory after watching his ride today, it is important to remember that one-day racing requires very different physical performances, and while Pogačar is busy traveling to/from these races, and putting out significant efforts winning them, his main Tour de France GC rival, Jonas Vingegaard, is living a life that is solely focused on stage racing success.
It is also important to cast our minds back to early 2023 when Pogačar looked unstoppable after starting the season with 12 wins in his first 18 race starts, only to appear wholly outclassed by Jonas Vingegaard when the Tour de France rolled around.
2) Long-range attacks: If we have learned anything so far in the young 2024 season, it is that the trend of the strongest riders using their strong teams to wind up the race before launching a solo attack is here to stay for the foreseeable future.
For example, after every one-day Monument in 2023 was won by solo riders, so far in 2024, Omloop and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, while not won by solo riders, were defined by extremely aggressive racing where small, elite groups forged clear of the peloton far from the finish line.
With this in mind, expect this type of ultra-aggressive racing to continue through 2024, especially since it was one of the only ways to thwart the late-race numerical advantage that benefits Visma’s deep team.
The only potential caveat or wrinkle to this strategy is that, at least so far in 2024, we haven’t seen members of the sport’s Big Six (Wout van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel, Primož Roglič, Tadej Pogačar, Remco Evenepoel, Jonas Vingegaard) racing against each other at major one-day events yet.
However, when this happens, instead of one rider going clear with 40% of the race remaining, I suspect we will likely just see this small group of elite talents forge off the front and contest the race amongst themselves (like we saw at nearly every major race in 2023).
My personal theory for why we are seeing this is that advances in the science of fueling, which allows riders to easily intake massive amounts of carbohydrates for hours, have allowed the top riders to attack earlier and earlier.
This might seem risky, but once they built up an initial gap, they have a very high chance of success since not only are they stronger than any of the chasers, meaning nobody in the chase group can pull fast enough to avoid losing time to them, and that, after a few minutes, the group will be unable to work together as they quickly start to race each other for the remaining podiums places.
Having a strong team capable of shredding the peloton and thinning down top team’s numbers before their leader attacks is key, since it means top rivals can’t simply sit back and let their domestiques reel in the attacker.
3) Toms Skujiņš: After looking like one of the strongest riders in the front group and the only rider capable of upsetting Visma’s day at Omloop last weekend, the veteran Latvian once again showed that he is continuing to improve year-over-year deep into his long career (he is in his 13th pro season) with a super impressive ride to get second place behind an unbeatable Pogačar, even after being crashed by his teammate Quinn Simmons.
The fact that Skujiņš, who is surely on a somewhat team-friendly deal at Lidl-Trek, is now consistently looking stronger than riders who are on superstar contracts should serve as a reminder that, even in the Age of the Superstar, there is plenty of value left for teams willing to hunt, and invest in, non-obvious talents.
It should also remind teams that if you aren’t getting a true superstar like Pogačar, spending millions of euros per year on a single rider almost certainly isn’t worth it.
4) New-look Lotto-Dstny: After getting a rider into the ultra-elite lead group at Omloop and upsetting the favorites at the UAE Tour last weekend, the second-division Belgian team continued to look every bit of their revamped selves en route to a solid third place at Strade. Their young duo of Van Eetvelt and Van Gils appeared both physically and tactically superior to almost everyone else in the chase group.
Impressively, they worked over the Ineos duo of Magnus Sheffield and defending champion Tom Pidcock, despite operating on a fraction of the budget.
Since parting ways with Caleb Ewan, and his massive contract, over the off-season, the team has looked almost unrecognizably good with a fleet of young homegrown talents.
The depth of young talent the team has been able to assemble is both impressive (and cost-friendly) and gives them a much-needed roster rebuild following a few seasons where they employed the outdated strategy of putting everything behind a star sprinter.
5) Visma-Lease a Bike isn’t unbeatable: A week after looking unbeatable at opening weekend, Visma-Lease a Bike quickly fell back to earth at Strade, with Christophe Laporte’s 10th place the team’s only result of note.
Their star rider Wout van Aert, and his ability to break a race up, pull, and finish off a race, missing the race to train at altitude certainly didn’t help, but it was still surprising to see Sepp Kuss ridden off Pogačar’s wheel and last year’s 5th place finisher, Attila Valter, struggling home in 19th.
We should note that the team was rumored to be facing an illness in their ranks before the race, and that even with better results, they looked like a bit of a mess at this race last year before getting back on track in the weeks afterward, but, it is worth noting their struggles since we are only a week removed from it looking as though the team would dominate the rest of the season.
On the flip side, even with Visma off their game on Saturday, the only team capable of stepping up was UAE, which means we are still facing a duopoly where the sport’s two biggest teams hover up the biggest race wins.
From Enve: “ With 81km to go, Pogačar made his move, dropping everyone off his wheel and going solo. During his attack, Pogačar had a maximum 5-minute power of 460w and an average power of 340w. Over the white Tuscan roads and many slippery descents, Pogačar averaged 38.8 kph during his solo effort and built up a lead of more than three minutes over second place.”
Impressive win, but as a Pogacar fan I’m hoping he doesn’t wear himself out. Attacking to ride solo 80km out is ridiculous! But, it’s true to Pogacar’s racing style and character.
It’s also sort of ridiculous to think one can ride both the Giro and Tour. That’s a month and a half of competitive racing at the highest level in the sport, within a period of less than three months. It doesn’t seem humanly possible for a rider to win both.