World Cycling Championships | Tadej Pogacar scores an unprecedented hat-trick

Winner of the Giro and Tour, Slovenia’s Tadej Pogacar lived up to his status as super favorite at the road race of the World Road Cycling Championships in Zurich on Sunday, when he won the first rainbow jersey -heaven of his career.

While the other contenders for the podium tried to limit the damage with more or less success, Pier-André Côté was the last of the Canadian team to be able to support its leader Mike Woods who finished in 54^e rank, or ten places behind the Quebecer (44^e), also present in a group which was a little over 12 minutes late.

Registered for the event, Guillaume Boivin did not start due to health problems.

“It’s pretty phenomenal how difficult a race it was! » said Côté, his voice tired, while he was already at the airport to head to Croatia to take part in a six-stage race which will begin on Tuesday.

“Personally, these are by far the most incredible stats recorded since I started cycling: 275 kilometers and more than 6000 calories. Yes, it’s a difficult race and I think we’ve seen that,” added the athlete from Saint-Henri-de-Lévis, laughing.

The future world champion especially made the difference in the wall at 17% inclination, where he climbed well in the saddle, while all the others were standing on the pedals, swinging their mounts from left to right to avoid getting hurt. pick up.

“For a guy like me, you just can’t go beyond your limit because the race is so long. If you pass it with 200 kilometers to go, you will curdle before the end, that’s for sure,” continued the Quebecer.

To stay with the dairy analogy, the winner of the recent Montreal Grand Prix, skimmed the peloton 100 kilometers from the end on the selective course. He then rode in the company of different riders to come back on the breakaway in progress and finally take control of the race alone with 50 kilometers to go, maintaining a lead of around a minute.

Woods left the chasing group with 70 kilometers to go to try to get back into the lead, which was then 40 seconds away, without success.

“It’s a bit of a disappointment because we were there for Woods. William [Boivin] was a non-starter, Derek [Gee, abandon] didn’t have the legs and with three laps to go, it was really the moment where I wanted to go all out, but unfortunately, we didn’t manage to connect together in the final stretch. We were close, but we couldn’t organize myself for me to make an effort and place him [Woods] in the best position,” said Côté.

The Australian Ben O’Connor took advantage of the wait-and-see attitude of the favorites in the chasing group to escape solo 1.5 kilometers from the line and finish in second place. The Dutchman and 2023 champion, Mathieu van der Poel, completed the podium.