Il Lombardia has become the headline act of what remains of the 2026 road season, and on Sunday afternoon Remco Evenepoel made his priority public within minutes of winning the European road race.
The Belgian beat Giulio Ciccone in a two-man sprint in Ljubljana, then told reporters he would not line up at Wednesday’s European time trial in Šenčur.
“No, no, I’m going to focus on Lombardia now,” Evenepoel said in his post-race interview.
The sprint itself had looked lost.
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“The sprint looked bad. I thought I wouldn’t make it anymore, but I saw he was losing a lot of speed with 100 metres to go and I managed to pass him right on the finish line,” he said.
Lombardia opens up without Pogacar
The 120th edition of Il Lombardia runs on Saturday, 10 October from Bergamo to Como over 239 km and roughly 4,600 metres of climbing, with a Como circuit featuring two ascents of San Fermo della Battaglia.
Pogacar, who won the last five editions in a row and became the first rider to take the same Monument five times in succession, will not be on the start list. The Slovenian broke his collarbone and sustained a stable C7 vertebral fracture and concussion in a crash on stage 8 of the Vuelta a España, and UAE Team Emirates-XRG has ruled him out of the rest of 2026.
Evenepoel has finished second to Pogacar at Lombardia in each of the last two years, 3:15 adrift in 2024 and 1:48 behind in 2025. He has never won the race, and his two Monument titles both came at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, in 2022 and 2023.
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Isaac del Toro, Paul Seixas and Enric Mas are among the other riders expected to contest the win.
A title defence set aside
The time trial Evenepoel is skipping, 22.1 km around Šenčur in Slovenia on Wednesday, would have been a defence of the European crown he took last October in Étoile-sur-Rhône, where he beat Filippo Ganna by 43.37 seconds.
He arrives in Italy as the reigning world time trial champion as well, having taken his fourth consecutive rainbow jersey in Montreal on 20 September. He rides for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, the German team he joined for the 2026 season.
Evenepoel will not shut his year down in Como. He is scheduled to close out his season at the Chrono des Nations in Les Herbiers on 18 October, where he will keep testing a new time trial bike developed with Specialized.
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