Pogacar, Roglic and Evenepoel the favourites as Pinot bids farewell to peloton
Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates), Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) and Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma)(Image credit: Getty Images)
There is still racing to follow on the calendar in the Veneto, in China and in France, but for many, Il Lombardia represents the symbolic end of the cycling season. Just as Milan-San Remo’s passage over the Turchino heralds the coming of spring, the Race of the Falling Leaves hints at the arrival of winter.
That said, an autumn heatwave in northern Italy means that temperatures should top 25°C on the road to Bergamo, where a field featuring some of the most notable performers of the past summer will contest the spoils.
Tadej Pogačar is seeking to emulate Fausto Coppi and Alfredo Binda with his third straight win, while his compatriot Primož Roglič will be aiming to end his time at Jumbo-Visma on a high note.
Remco Evenepoel leads a Soudal-QuickStep team still reeling from news of the proposed merger with Jumbo-Visma, while 2018 winner Thibaut Pinot bids farewell to the professional peloton on some of his favourite roads. Cyclingnews casts a glance over some of the riders to watch on Saturday.
Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) (Image credit: Getty Images)
Winner in 2021 and 2022, Tadej Pogačar is looking to maintain his 100% record at Il Lombardia and become the first man to claim the Race of the Falling Leaves three times in a row since Fausto Coppi.
After a glorious, all-action Spring and a bruising Tour de France, Pogačar opted against the Vuelta a España and the Canadian WorldTour races in the latter part of the season, limiting himself instead to a series of one-day races in Italy.
Pogačar has been aggressive on Italian roads, but he hasn’t yet been able to overwhelm his rivals as he did back in the Spring. His condition, however, has looked to be in crescendo since he returned to action at the Giro della Toscana, and he will have drawn encouragement from his second-place finish at the Giro dell’Emilia.
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Jumbo-Visma’s dominance has ultimately proved to be the story of the season, but that will only make Pogačar even keener to have the last word.
Whatever happens on Saturday, Primož Roglič will be in the headlines as he makes his final appearance in Jumbo-Visma’s yellow and black jersey before leaving for pastures new. The Slovenian matter-of-factly confirmed his departure on the start line of the Giro dell’Emilia and then equally matter-of-factly scorched to victory four hours later atop the San Luca.
On Tuesday, Roglič wasn’t able to replicate his 2019 Tre Valli Varesine victory, but he had already hinted that Il Lombardia would be his main objective of the week and he looked comfortable in responding to Pogačar’s aggression.
Roglič has always started among the favourites for Il Lombardia but his best finish in the race was his fourth place of two years ago. His 2023 vintage, however, has arguably been his best yet, with wins at the Giro d’Italia, Tirreno-Adriatico, Volta a Catalunya and Vuelta a Burgos, not to mention his part in Jumbo-Visma’s sweep of the Vuelta podium. Il Lombardia might provide the grand farewell, with Roglič hinting he would reveal his 2024 team shortly afterwards.
Remco Evenepoel has yet to speak publicly about the proposed merger between Jumbo-Visma and Soudal-QuickStep, though he might well offer up a statement of sorts on the road to Bergamo on Saturday.
Evenepoel’s GC challenge at the Vuelta fell short last month, but he still emerged from the race with his reputation enhanced after his boundless aggression netted him three stage wins and the king of the mountains title. If he can replicate that élan at Il Lombardia, just about anything is possible.
Il Lombardia carries a particular resonance for Evenepoel, who suffered a career-threatening crash on the descent of the Sormano during the novel, summer edition of 2020. He was still short of his best when he returned in 2021, while he skipped last year’s race after landing the world title in Wollongong.
Ilan Van Wilder, such an impressive winner of Tre Valli Varesine, will be a most useful foil for Evenepoel, while Julian Alaphilippe will also be hand, even though the Frenchman remains short of his best at the end of a trying campaign.
Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates) (Image credit: Getty Images)
The switch from Ineos Grenadiers to UAE Team Emirates has paid dividends for Adam Yates, who has enjoyed the best season of his career in 2023. The obvious high point was the Tour de France, where Yates claimed third overall, a stage win and a spell in the yellow jersey, but he has finished out the year just as strongly as he began it, notching up victory at the Grand Prix de Montréal last month.
In Canada, of course, Yates had the luxury of racing for himself. On Saturday, he will set out from Como as Pogačar’s deluxe gregario, a role he again performed at the Giro dell’Emilia last weekend, where he laid down a fierce tempo on the final lap of the finishing circuit and most of the way up the Colle della Guardia.
It will be fascinating to see how UAE choose to deploy Yates on Saturday, given that Pogačar has not quite reached his unassailable best in this final phase of the season. Indeed, such is Yates’ understanding with Pogačar, he may find his role changes on the hoof in the finale.
Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) (Image credit: Getty Images)
Il Lombardia’s position on the calendar means the sport’s most beguiling Monument also doubles as the last-chance saloon for riders looking to save their seasons. Motivation counts for a lot at this point in the season, as a glance at the race’s roll of honour shows. For some, Saturday’s race is a chance to put a very different gloss on their campaigns.
Richard Carapaz certainly fits the bill. After a difficult winter, the Ecuadorian champion had a slow start to life at EF Education-EasyPost. Then, just when he looked to be building up a head of steam, he crashed out of the Tour de France on the first day and didn’t recover in time to ride the Vuelta.
Carapaz still has two years to run on his contract and he would have been forgiven for writing 2023 off as a lost cause. Instead, he has been repeatedly to the fore in the closing weeks of the season, placing second at the Giro della Toscana and Tre Valli Varesine, and seventh at both the Coppa Sabatini and Giro dell’Emilia.
Remarkably, the Olympic champion has raced Il Lombardia just once before, placing 13th in 2020, but he is an obvious contender here, and he lines out on an EF Education-EasyPost team that includes another clear dangerman in Ben Healy, so impressive all season and on form at the recent Tour of Luxembourg.
Like Carapaz, Enric Mas crashed out of the Tour on the first day and he is also out to save his season at Il Lombardia. The Spaniard did make it back in time for the Vuelta, but he never once looked like competing at the same, exalted level of Jumbo-Visma, reaching Madrid in 6th place overall.
Still, the result ensured he would have something to show for his season, and Mas has appeared keen to make the most of his Autumn condition on Italian roads. He placed fourth at the Giro dell’Emilia at the weekend and looked to be comfortably trading blows with Pogačar and Roglič at Tre Valli Varesine on Tuesday.
Mas was beaten into second by Pogačar in the two-up sprint at the end of last year’s Il Lombardia and he should be in the mix again here.
Aleksandr Vlasov (Bora-Hansgrohe) (Image credit: Getty Images)
Aleksandr Vlasov hasn’t won a race in 2023, but he has again been a model of quiet consistency in his second season at Bora-Hansgrohe. Illness forced a premature end to his Giro d’Italia, but the Russian returned in the summer with striking podium finishes at the Clásica de San Sebastián and the Vuelta a Burgos.
Those displays raised hopes ahead of the Vuelta a España, but, like many, he found that Jumbo-Visma were travelling to places he simply couldn’t reach, and he placed 7th overall in Madrid. Vlasov placed on the podium of Il Lombardia in the summer edition of 2020, but he has never quite hit the same high notes in its traditional October date. Still, there were some encouraging signs in his first two outings this week, as he placed sixth atop the San Luca at the Giro dell’Emilia and then won the sprint for third at Tre Valli Varesine on Tuesday.
Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost) (Image credit: Getty Images)
By any metric, Ben Healy has been one of the revelations of the 2023 season. He got off to a fast start with third place at the Trofeo Calvia in January and simply kept on going. Victories Off Broadway at GP Industria & Artigianato and the Settimana Coppi e Bartali didn’t garner the attention they deserved at the time, but the world sat up and took notice after Healy’s remarkable Classics campaign, where he took second at Brabantse Pijl and Amstel Gold Race before narrowly missing out on the podium at Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
The displays were all the more remarkable given that the races were a late addition to his programme ahead of his main target, the Giro. No matter, Healy proceeded to land a striking solo victory at Fossombrone and he came close to repeating the feat in the miniature Il Lombardia to Bergamo a week later.
The Irish champion has quietly found his legs again in the final weeks of the season, claiming a by-now trademark solo victory in Vianden on the Tour of Luxembourg en route to third overall. He abandoned Tre Valli Varesine in midweek and Carapaz is EF’s stated leader at Il Lombardia – but if Healy goes up the road, he won’t be easily brought back.
Ben O’Connor (AG2R Citroën) (Image credit: Getty Images)
The Tour de France didn’t play out the way Ben O’Connor had hoped, but the Australian has regrouped well, throwing himself into the final part of his year with gusto. After the high-wire act of preparing and racing a Grand Tour, O’Connor has looked like a man enjoying the freedom offered by his late-season programme.
O’Connor caught the eye with a late attack at the GP de Montréal, where he finished in 7th place, and he has been to the fore in Italy over the past week too as he builds towards Il Lombardia.
Pogačar, Roglič et al may be at a different level to just about allcomers, but Van Wilder’s canny Tre Valli Varesine triumph was a reminder of the opportunities that abound at this point in the season. O’Connor hasn’t got his timing quite right thus far, but he has been consistently in the mix in recent weeks.
Thibaut Pinot had already had something like the perfect send-off on the penultimate stage of the Tour de France, when his attack on the Petit Ballon set hearts aflutter. It scarcely mattered that he was caught by the yellow jersey group on the final ascent of Platzerwasel. On a day like that, racing on his own training roads, the emotions far outweighed the result. “The best farewell would have been to win, but I can’t be too greedy,” Pinot said afterwards. “That only happens in books or television shows.”
Rather than hang up his wheels there and then, however, Pinot has continued to race, having long signalled his desire to end his career at Il Lombardia, a nod to his longstanding fascination with life and racing on the other side of the Alps.
Pinot enjoyed some of his finest moments in Italy, most notably when he won Il Lombardia in 2018, and he also endured considerable heartbreak in the country, such as his travails on the final weekend of that year’s Giro.
On Saturday, Pinot will tilt at the windmill one final time. A crash at Tour Poitou-Charentes hasn’t helped his late-season form and victory in Bergamo is surely beyond him, but that won’t matter to the Collectif Ultra Pinot. They will be out in force on the final climb of the Colle Aperto, with a number of former teammates already confirming their presence on the ‘Curva Pinot’ on Saturday afternoon.
Barry Ryan is Head of Features at Cyclingnews. He has covered professional cycling since 2010, reporting from the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and events from Argentina to Japan. His writing has appeared in The Independent, Procycling and Cycling Plus. He is the author of The Ascent: Sean Kelly, Stephen Roche and the Rise of Irish Cycling’s Golden Generation, published by Gill Books.
