{"id":621011,"date":"2026-04-21T08:34:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T08:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/621011\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T08:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T08:34:11","slug":"the-way-were-seeing-guys-actually-starting-to-beat-pogacar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/621011\/","title":{"rendered":"The way we’re seeing guys actually starting to beat Pogacar…"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

However it is a crash that brings big changes to the Ardennes, as Jorgenson was set up to be Visma’s leader and with specific preparation towards the three races – whilst Vauquelin himself may not recover from his injuries to regain his very best form.<\/p>\n

It was a race where Evenepoel looked by far the strongest, and was followed by defending champion Mattias Skjelmose who was beaten in the sprint for victory. Behind, no-one was anywhere near the same level (except for a Romain Gr\u00e9goire, who cracked in the final half hour of the race.<\/p>\n

The Belgian pundit praised Beno\u00ect Cosnefroy, who led UAE onto a podium. “He did all the work. There was an EF rider [Alex Baudin] who took the odd turn at the front, but Cosnefroy really did everything \u2014 and ended up winning the sprint for third place, two minutes behind. That shows the gap between the top two and everyone else. But still it was a good race from him.”<\/p>\n

\"Remco<\/p>\n

Remco Evenepoel ahead of Amstel Gold Race 2026<\/p>\n

Seixas and Evenepoel ready themselves to battle PogacarFl\u00e8che Wallonne follows this Wednesday<\/a>, and afterwards comes Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge where the three will meet for the first time this season. Last year, they were together on the podium of the European Championships’ road race, where Seixas broke through as a top climber.<\/p>\n

“It’s being built as this three-man battle with Remco, Pogacar and now Paul Seixas. This kid overnight, not overnight, in a year – and you guys apparently have all the numbers to confirm this is the real deal – He is in the conversation,” Lance Amstrong argued. George Hincapie agrees, lifting the Frenchman to a level that can only be compared with one other rider in the peloton: “What he did in the Basque Country is incredible, Pogacar-esque”. There, the 19-year old won three out of the six stages with tough competition, but looked by far the strongest, ruling over the overall classification with ease all week long.<\/p>\n

These two men are the only ones who can realistically challenge Pogacar in Li\u00e8ge, but even if it is possible, how do you beat him? “The way we’re seeing guys actually starting to beat Pogacar is like ‘maybe we don’t need to go toe-to-toe pulling with him on breakaways’,” Hincapie argued. “Maybe they kind of sandbag and not pull as much and just think about getting to the finish line faster”.<\/p>\n

Wout Van Aert has done so slightly in Roubaix, to some effect. Above all, doing otherwise has proved to be a deadly tactic – as Mathieu van der Poel can tell after Milano-Sanremo and the Tour of Flanders.<\/p>\n

“Remco is having a really good build up to this week and I’m sure this week is super important for him as we just saw today. And then we have Seixas in the mix, hopefully it’s quite interesting. Hopefully Pogacar doesn’t ride away from them and we have a really exciting finish like we’ve had in the last few world cups (world championships, ed.).<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" However it is a crash that brings big changes to the Ardennes, as Jorgenson was set up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[212379,64,63,784,186551,172758,90670,8396,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-621011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-amstel-gold-race","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-cycling","12":"tag-george-hincapie","13":"tag-johan-bruyneel","14":"tag-lance-armstrong","15":"tag-remco-evenepoel","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}