{"id":190738,"date":"2025-10-10T15:26:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/190738\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T15:26:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:26:16","slug":"the-inner-ring-il-lombardia-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/190738\/","title":{"rendered":"The Inner Ring | Il Lombardia Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It\u2019s this Saturday, it\u2019ll be sunny and there\u2019s live TV coverage from the start at 10.50 CEST to the finish at around 5.00pm. These things feel as easy to state as Poga\u010dar is to win, he\u2019s certainly the overwhelming pick for the race.<\/p>\n

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The Course: Como to Bergamo, 241km with almost 4,500m of vertical gain. It\u2019s the same as 2021 and 2023. This is a quasi-Alpine course characterised by long climbs rather than sharp walls. The first climb is to the Madonna del Ghisallo chapel, with the sacrilege of climbing up from Asso rather than from Bellagio<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The climb to Roncola is the Sella di San Bernado and 9km with a middle 7km at over 8%, it\u2019s selective. The next climb to Berbenno is more gentle, almost a big ring climb. The same for the next climb to the Passo Crocetta via Dossena, a long steady climb to sap the legs and chased by a big descent.<\/p>\n

The Passo di Ganda is the crucial point, 9.2 km at 7.3%, maxxing at 15% and crucially the upper slopes are the steepest. This is a wilder climb than the others.<\/p>\n

The descent via Selvino is tricky too with many hairpin bends. Then comes more than 10km on the flat in anticipation of the final climb above Bergamo.<\/p>\n

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The Finish
Bergamo Alta it\u2019s up the narrow cobbled ramps through ancient gates and medieval streets. The profile above doesn\u2019t show the corners nor the cobbles which make this a leg breaker and the last bend is with 700m to go.<\/p>\n

The Contenders<\/p>\n

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Tadej Poga\u010dar (UAE) has won the last four editions and can equal Fausto Coppi\u2019s tally of five wins, in fact he can go better as Coppi did not collect five in a row. Several of these wins for Poga\u010dar have been harder than we might imagine, he\u2019s had to out-sprint someone at the end of a long season where he\u2019s been fading. Right now he seems in untouchable form after winning the Worlds and Euros in the last two weekends with solo raids. The win feels near-inevitable, scripted even with UAE driving a hard pace before he goes solo on the Passo di Ganda.<\/p>\n

Is it even worth doing a preview? If you\u2019ve got here rather than just thinking \u201cPoga\u010dar\u201d and saving yourself a click that might be a surprise. This blog could be clever and try to predict the second placed rider or the winning margin but those outcomes are too contingent on negative outcomes, of riders not chasing and racing for second place so prediction is even harder, and probably pointless. At least you know what time the finish is; but in this Poga\u010dar era you want to watch the action earlier rather than the probable solo ride to the finish.<\/p>\n

If not Poga\u010dar then one of his team mates? Isaac Del Toro has been winning plenty and has a good chance but as we saw in the Tre Valle Varesine, if Del Toro is in contention then so are other rivals and Poga\u010dar will have to race for the win instead. Adam Yates and Jay Vine can feature too but as ever once the Slovenian starts the team seems to get behind him and he wants this Monument to finish the season.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s the end of an era with Remco Evenepoel in his last outing in the Soudal-Quickstep overalls. This race has been difficult for him over the years but it\u2019s a sign of his application that he\u2019s confronted weaknesses and worked on them and is now probably the only rider who will plan on a direct contest with Poga\u010dar, even if he risks being dropped on the Ganda climb but trying to hold on or come back soon after and then contesting a sprint might be his best option.<\/p>\n

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There is the \u201cglorious uncertainty of sport\u201d and anything can happen with a strong list of contenders. Few other races gather Ben Healy, Richard Carapaz, Mattias Skjelmose, Quinn Simmons, Oscar Onley, Tom Pidcock, Cian Uijtdebroeks, Lenny Martinez, Antonio Tiberi, Michael Storer, Julian Alaphilippe, Primo\u017e Rogli\u010d, Jai Hindley, Aleksandr Vlasov, Ben O\u2019Connor, Christian Scaroni, Paul Seixas et al.<\/p>\n

How many of these star names are willing to make early moves as there\u2019s strength in numbers if teams and their leaders want to try and take on UAE but as ever challengers will the hope that others do this first, that a move with some big names in it forces UAE to over-reach so that they can make their move later but in turn UAE will count on this caution.<\/p>\n

Weather: hazy sunshine and 22\u00b0C.<\/p>\n

TV: live from start at 10.40am to the finish at around 5.00pm CEST. It\u2019s on RAI, first RAI Sport then RAI 2 from 2.00pm; and on Eurosport and other channels internationally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s this Saturday, it\u2019ll be sunny and there\u2019s live TV coverage from the start at 10.50 CEST to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-190738","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}