Tadej Pogačar has already completed his pre-race recon of Saturday's 2024 Il Lombardia, when the 26-year-old could become the first rider since Fausto Coppi to secure four straight wins of the Race of the Falling Leaves.
Clad in his rainbow jersey, on Wednesday the 2024 Road World Champion and his UAE teammates for the final Monument of the 2024 season rode roughly 130 kilometres of the last part of the course. Riding in thankfully much drier weather than the torrential rain that led to the suspension of Tuesday's Tre Valle Varesine, their recon included the three key climbs of the Madonna del Ghisallo, Colma di Sormano and the San Fermo della Battaglia in the finish city of Como.
But as the countdown continues to the final Monument of the 2024 season, the question of what a possible fourth Pogačar victory in Il Lombardia would mean in terms of cycling's all-time achievements is rapidly gaining prominence, too.
Whatever happens on Saturday, Pogačar is already the first rider in the elite men's peloton to take the Triple Crown of Giro d'Italia, Tour de France and World Championships since Stephen Roche in 1987. Even without the additional successes of Volta a Catalunya, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Strade Bianche, GP Montreal and Giro dell'Emilia, that achievement alone would surely classify Pogačar's season as the greatest of any male rider in the 21st century.
According to the Cycling statistics X (formerly Twitter) account, in terms of the straight win count, a 25th victory for 2024 would put Pogačar on a par with Italian sprinter Alessandro Petacchi's 25 triumphs in 2005, the all-time record to date for the 21st century.
In terms of the quality of those triumphs rather than pure quantity, Pogačar's career is drawing more and more comparisons to Eddy Merckx. Merckx himself stated after the World Championships that the Slovenian's performance that day had been on a level above even his own rainbow jersey battles.
Should Pogačar win on Sunday, the UAE racer would equal Fausto Coppi's 1949 record of two Monuments and two Grand Tours (Milan-San Remo, Il Lombardia, Giro d'Italia, Tour de France) in a single season. But he would still be one short of Merckx's three Monuments-two Grand Tour achievement of 1972 (Milan-San Remo, Paris-Roubaix, Il Lombardia, Giro d'Italia and Tour de France).
However, add in the World Championships victory and the Triple Crown and when it comes to a single season, Pogačar is already operating in a class of his own. Neither Merckx nor Roche won any Monuments in the years they took the Giro-Tour-Worlds triple (1974 and 1987 respectively) and come what may on Saturday, Pogačar already has one Monument in his 2024 palmares.
"He's in great shape," UAE Team Emirates CEO Mauro Gianetti told La Gazzetta dello Sport on Thursday, explaining that the UAE training recon had been brought forward a day because of Tuesday's suspension of Tre Valle Varesine "and he's got a special focus on Il Lombardia."
As for equalling Coppi's total of four straight victories, Gianetti specified, though, that "The record? He's not thinking about that. He's taking one goal at a time."
