Spin Cycle Race Analysis: Milan-San Remo

“Been watching sports since the 80s. I enjoy Tadej like I did seeing Senna drive, Jordan play, Messi, or Zidane. Unbelievable sportsman. Appreciate him now. You will never see anyone (else) like him.”

This was the most-liked comment from the official highlights reel from last weekend’s Milan-San Remo, the first Monument of the 2026 season, and I couldn’t agree more.

In December 2023, a video on YouTube with cycling media personality Matt Stephens and Tadej Pogačar was posted. (Watch: Matt Stephens The Cafe Ride – Tadej Pogačar.)

It runs for half an hour and there’s a few interesting reveals about The Pog, but for me the one that stuck in my head was his admission that Milan-San Remo is “probably the hardest (of the Monuments) for me to win”.

It was the end of the season – his fifth in the WorldTour – and more than two months out from when he’d start racing a new one. At that point, he’d won five Monuments – one Ronde van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders) and Liège-Bastogne-Liège apiece and three Tours of Lombardy – and two Tours de France.

He’d ridden Milan-San Remo three times and his results were thus: twelfth (2020), fifth (2022), fourth (2023).

The winners in those years: Wout van Aert (beat Julian Alaphilippe in a two-man sprint); fellow Slovenian Matej Mohorič (solo win; used a dropper seatpost on the descent of the Poggio to, well, drop a front group of nine); two-time winner and last Saturday’s hot favourite, Mathieu van der Poel (solo win; dropped his three breakaway companions descending the Poggio).

A change of attitude

Pogačar, then 24 years young and already considered one of the all-time greats, knew he needed to change his approach to cycling if he was indeed to be a great – or perhaps even one day, the greatest.

He won the 2020 and 2021 Tours on talent alone but rising Dane, Jonas Vingegaard, turned the tables and won the 2022 and 2023 editions on lesser talent but a better work ethic compared to Tadej.

His team, UAE Team Emirates, bolstered themselves further, in particular for the mountains, and Pogačar, in that 2023/24 off-season, trained harder than he’d ever had before. I wouldn’t be surprised if Eye Of The Tiger was on repeat throughout all of his off-bike training sessions. To the Pog, Vingegaard was Ivan Drago.

In Season 2024, he won 9 out of 12 races including the Giro-Tour double and his first road world championship, in Zürich, Switzerland.

One of the four races he did not win was Milan-San Remo. But he finished one place better than 2023, behind sprinters Jasper Philipsen and Australia’s Michael Matthews, who was also developing his own love-hate relationship with La Classicissima, having also finished twice third, in 2015 and 2020.

In the 2024 M-SR the front group was a relatively sizeable dozen-strong, so, having thought more about how to win this seemingly unwinnable Classic, Tadej decided to go all out on the penultimate climb of the Cipressa on March 22, 2025.

When he attacked where we thought he go, only van der Poel and Italian Filippo Ganna could stay with him, yet, despite setting the fastest recorded time by 20 seconds (a record held since 1996), Pogačar couldn’t shed either of them.

Annoyingly, they stuck to his wheel like a stepping onto freshly-brewed dog dropping in the park; down the Cipressa, along the valley, up the Poggio, and all the way to San Remo, where he got pumped by both and finished third – again.

He nearly won Paris-Roubaix in his first attempt – again at the mercy of van der Poel – which made him think winning The Hell of the North was actually easier for a guy like him.

Actually, come to think of it, winning the Tour was easier than winning Milan-San Remo!

“I’ll just go faster…”

Still, despite winning a fourth TdF and a second consecutive rainbow jersey, he wanted to keep trying to win San Remo. Lying in bed at night, one then done, he probably thought to himself.

I’ll just go faster. Faster on the Cipressa. Faster on the Poggio.

On Saturday March 21, 2026, despite losing team-mate Jan Christian early in the peace, the game plan was coming together as the peloton containing all pre-race favourites approached the Cipressa at breakneck speed…

A touch of wheels. Pogačar’s down. Pogačar’s down!

All over Red Rover?

No, no quite – this is Tadej Pogačar, after all. As quickly as one can after a high-speed spill, he got back up, straightened his bars, and gave chase.

Yep, if it wasn’t Tadej Pogačar you’d probably say it was all over, but literally shredded from the fall, with team-mate Brendon McNulty he nevertheless found himself at the front well before the top, and then with assistance of Isaac del Toro, tore the race to shreds – only to find two barnacles in the form of van der Poel and Tom Pidcock clasped to his wheel.

But, perhaps a result of circumstances beforehand, he seemed to care less than last year: The Pog bombed the descent of the Cipressa, made his two hangers-on swap turns to the foot of Il Poggio, then, once on the climb, went into hyperdrive and soon dropped the Dutchman and defending champion.

Try as he did, he couldn’t rid himself of the scrawny Pidcock, who was on a pearler of a day. The Pinarello Q36.5 leader is regarded as one of the best descenders in the peloton, if not the best, so it was going to come down to a sprint…

On paper, the commentators were saying Pidcock was a tad zippier.

But this was a sprint after 298 kilometres.

On the Via Roma the Brit was in the box seat, tucked behind Pogačar, though in hindsight a little too close, unable to launch a surprise move.

“I was a bit afraid when he let me go first,” admitted the Slovenian afterwards. “I also knew I couldn’t wait too long (to start my sprint, because) he has a better kick than me, probably.”

Pidcock: “I tried to make him go earlier, but…he knows what he’s doing.”

“I was told it was just four centimetres… and that’s very painful (to hear) that it was so close.”

“As annoying as he is, being so good, it’s impressive. But I can’t help but be disappointed right now.”

At least you know it’s a race you can one day win? suggested the interviewer.

“Yeah,” said Pidcock ruefully, “but Tadej told me he’s not going to come back… So what motorbike am I going to sit behind now?”

Next stop: Ronde van Vlaanderen on April 15. Belgian cycling fans call it Flanders’ Finest or Vlaanderen’s Mooiste.

Pogačar’s won it twice already. He’s the defending champion. It suits him more than M-SR.

From the two races we’ve seen so far, he’s a little better than last year.

As the YouTube commenter suggests, appreciate him now. We may never see anyone else like him.