Bike

In Rwanda bis World Championship for Pogacar after a 66 km solo breakaway

Second Evenepoel, Ciccone sixth at over six minutes

28 September 2025

Il ciclista sloveno Tadej Pogacar festeggia sul podio dopo aver vinto la gara su strada Elite maschile, ai Campionati del mondo di ciclismo su strada a Kigali, in Ruanda.

4' min read

The diabolical Martian had tricked us. Clearly beaten a week ago at the time trial by Evenepoel, he had led us to believe that even he, Tadej Pogacar, the new cannibal of cycling, was a poor human like the rest of us.

He too was fragile, he too did not always live up to general expectations. He had even made us tender when Evenepoel had caught up with him and overtaken him, almost mocking him. We wanted to reassure him, comfort him. To tell him that it happens to everyone sooner or later that they don't make it.

A glaring blunder. A stupid mistake of underestimation, which, with Tadej, can never be done as he proved in this road world championship in Rwanda. Let us make public amends: he is the King of Africa. He is the absolute ruler of cycling on the globe and also the ruler of the two-wheeled galaxies. Here in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. he silences any discourse, any debate, by again becoming world champion after 66 kilometres of solitary escape.

In fact to turn on the turbo, Pogacar had already started earlier, on Mont Kigali, 104 kilometres from the finish. But then the other survivors who remained on his wheel, chafed on the road almost in guilt for having committed such a sin of presumption. On a circuit like this, with 35 climbs, 5475 metres of elevation gain, and even cobblestones to grind your bones, keeping up with such a monster is frankly impossible.

"I couldn't wait for it to end. I'm in pieces, look at my face,' explained our Giulio Ciccone who finished sixth at 6'47". An honourable race his, but frankly incomparable with that of Pogacar who, as usual, was not even particularly sweaty at the finish line.

"That's not true, I struggled a lot too. I would have preferred the little group with Del Toro to have stayed a little longer. Instead almost 70km alone is a lot. I also had some doubts. But I gritted my teeth and made it to the end,' Tadej explains laconically.

The King of Africa is not one to make too many speeches. He just needs to win, leaving the others to watch his rapidly receding back. This year Pogacar won the Strade Bianche and the Fleche Wallonne; then Flanders, Liège, Dauphiné, Tour de France. Plus, just to leave something for others, second at Roubaix and third at San Remo.

What more is there to say? That soon, at the next Giro di Lombardia, he will win that one too. He will perhaps say that he is a little tired, that the season has been long, that he is beginning to feel like going on holiday. But don't believe him, don't make that mistake again. Pogacar not only wants to win every race he takes part in but, at only 27 years old, he wants to prove to the world that he is even stronger than Eddy Merck, the great totem of cycling of all time with his 525 victories in the 1960s and 1970s.

We will see how this personal challenge of his will go: at the moment Tadej counts 105 successes, including 4 Tour de France and 1 Giro d'Italia. And in the classics 2 Flanders, 3 Liège and 4 Giro di Lombardia. Merckx is still a long way off though, the Slovenian is only 27 years old. It will have to be seen how long he will maintain this iron determination to win.

Remco Evenepoel, who had thrown down the gauntlet to him on the eve of the race, finished second at 1'28" after suffering various mechanical problems. In practice, when Tadej started to go fast, Remco lost almost a minute changing his bike. A problem that certainly affected him. Then the Belgian recovered, regaining several positions. But to leave more than a minute to Pogacar is too heavy a toll. On the podium Evenepoel had a penitent face. One can understand him because after winning the time trial, he would have liked to complete the job by also winning the World Championship on the road.

The impression, however, is that Tadej the African, is too superior even to the Belgian. At least in the present. Of the future let's not talk, there is no certainty anyway. Third on the podium was Irishman Ben Healy, who was able to pull away from Dane Skjelmose in the final.

The Italians ran a discrete race, without infamy but without honour. Of the eight in the race, in addition to Ciccone, only Andrea Bagioli, (17th) at 10'06", and rookie Gianmarco Garofoli, (22nd) at 10'16", crossed the finish line,

In short, we are always behind. Thank goodness that we have hope for the future: that Lorenzo Finn who, at only 18 years of age, won the Under-23 World Championship after winning the Junior one in Zurich in 2024. An unmistakable sign. To say that a star has been born is perhaps too much. But a light in the darkness of our cycling has certainly come on.