Tadej Pogacar posted a short Instagram clip at the weekend of a small group of riders lifting their jerseys to compare surgery scars, then rolling out into the hills above Monaco. His partner Urska Zigart rode alongside him, along with Eddie Dunbar and Gladys Verhulst-Wild. It was the first time the reigning world champion had been on his bike outdoors since a crash at the Vuelta a Espana in late August ended his season.
“First day back, last day with rainbow,” Pogacar wrote alongside the video.
The timing was deliberate. The following day in Montreal, the road race at the UCI Road World Championships would produce a new champion, and the rainbow jersey Pogacar had held for two years would move to another rider’s back.
The crash that ended his season
Pogacar had crashed on stage 8 of the Vuelta a Espana, on the run from Puçol to Xeraco, while leading the race by 3 minutes 50 seconds. UAE Team Emirates-XRG doctor Adrian Rotunno set out the damage in a team statement.
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“Tadej has been diagnosed with a concussion, displaced left clavicle fracture, a stable C7 cervical fracture, and multiple abrasions,” Rotunno said.
Team manager Joxean Fernandez Matxin was blunter. “Now we have to be with Tadej the person, not with Tadej Pogacar the cyclist,” he said.
Clavicle surgery was delayed for concussion precautions, then declared successful, and Pogacar flew home to Monaco. The season, and any chance of defending the rainbow jersey in Montreal, was gone.
The new champion, from his own team
Twenty-four hours after Pogacar’s Monaco ride, Brandon McNulty attacked with 32 kilometres to go on the 273-kilometre Montreal course and held off the chase to win by 13 seconds. Michael Matthews of Australia took silver, Mathieu van der Poel bronze.
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“Until the last 300 meters, I really didn’t even believe it. I was so tired,” McNulty said. “Up the last climb I was only doing zone two.”
McNulty is the first American man to win the elite road race world title since Lance Armstrong in 1993, a gap of 33 years. He also rides for UAE Team Emirates-XRG, so the rainbow bands stay inside the same team kit room, only on a different back.
Pogacar has no return race pencilled in. When he next lines up, it will be in his regular UAE Team Emirates-XRG colours.
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