Another weekend, another monster solo victory for Tadej Pogačar. Sunday’s European Championships road race in the French Ardèche region saw the Slovenian attack solo with 75km to go and hang on for a 31-second victory over (once again) a dispirited solo chaser Remco Evenepoel.
It’s becoming hard to remember a time when UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider Pogačar wasn’t the imperious winning machine that he has been for much of this season, such is the regularity with which he trounces all comers.
James Shrubsall
James has worked at a variety of races for CW, from the Classics to the Giro d’Italia – and this year was his seventh Tour de France.
But you need only think back two seasons ago to recall a time when he was very much the underdog – certainly at the Tour de France – and many fans were starting to become deeply concerned that we might be looking at several years of Jonas Vingegaard dominance.
But how the tables have turned. And now it appears the malaise is setting in again – this time directed at Pogačar.
This became apparent at the weekend, with Pogačar suffering all manner of harassment as he rode through fans that crowded the Val d’Enfer climb.
According to a report in Dutch outlet Wielerflits, many fans put stickers on his back as he rode through, with others dropping their trousers or attempting to startle him by pretending to kick out.
Whether or not this is a one-off occurrence remains to be seen. But the smart money suggests that the longer Pogačar’s dominance continues, the more frequent this kind of behaviour will become.
There is, of course, no excuse for it. You don’t have to like the rider that dominates. Boo them if you like. But physical contact and overtly aggressive behaviour as they pass by inches away isn’t on and is the sort of thing that could see climbs closed off for fans.
Expecting a rider to give up the victory simply because they won the week before (and yes, the week before that) is unrealistic given how hard every pro works all year to be able to put themselves in a position to do so.
As history shows though, once a rider has been dominant for long enough, it is also unrealistic to expect cycling fans to remain universally supportive of them.
The bike racing annals are littered with generational talents who suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fandom. Every other decade has one. Jacques Anquetil – inaugurator of the five-time Tour de France-winning ‘Club Cinq’ – snubbed by home fans in favour of eternal underdog Raymond Poulidor. Eddy Merckx, whose cannibalistic ways eventually led to a fan fatigue that hurt him deeply. Lance Armstrong and US Postal Service, who even when the doping was only a rumour, left huge swathes of cycling fans non-plussed by their machine-like dominance. And then Team Sky and Chris Froome, whose US Postal-like dominance quickly became old for non-British fans.
Pogačar has spent much of the past two seasons riding a wave of goodwill, a lot of which is down to his ability to mix a human charm and humour with seemingly inhuman feats of cycling brilliance.
But the calling card he brandishes with increasing regularity – the swashbuckling long-range solo attack – is apparently starting to leave some fans cold. After all, we can now be reasonably sure that when ‘Pogi’ gets a gap with 75km to go (or some other equally unlikely distance), that the race is over.
The first few times you see it, it’s hard not to be impressed. But it feels inevitable that some fans will be turned off by the ensuing lack of any jeopardy.
Whether Pogačar is aloof to the disapproval of onlookers like Anquetil, who required only “respect not adoration”, or sensitive like Eddy Merckx, has yet to be truly tested.
But if the Pogačar juggernaut keeps on rolling, that could soon change.
