{"id":459353,"date":"2026-03-05T18:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T18:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/459353\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T18:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T18:58:09","slug":"strade-bianche-on-the-horizon-but-milan-san-remo-on-the-mind-tadej-pogacar-sets-unofficial-strava-record-on-the-cipressa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/459353\/","title":{"rendered":"Strade Bianche on the horizon but Milan-San Remo on the mind \u2013 Tadej Poga\u010dar sets unofficial Strava record on the Cipressa"},"content":{"rendered":"

All eyes are on Tadej Poga\u010dar<\/a> ahead of this weekend as the world champion prepares to kick off his season at Strade Bianche,<\/a> but the Slovenian\u2019s mind would appear to be elsewhere.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, four days out from the race, the UAE Team Emirates-XRG<\/a> leader was not riding on the famous white gravel tracks in the Tuscan countryside but up and around the Ligurian coastline, deep into the route of another Italian Classic, Milan-San Remo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Poga\u010dar has been spotted on the course of La Classicissima a few times in recent months and now he has raised eyebrows with a new record time on the Cipressa, the penultimate climb of Milan-San Remo and the one crucial to his hopes and dreams at the race.<\/p>\n

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It takes a bit of scraping around in the Strava app, but the fitness tracking platform shows that Poga\u010dar went up the Cipressa \u2013 which measures 5.58km at an average gradient of 4.2% \u2013 in a time of 8:51. For context, Poga\u010dar holds the KOM, or course record, for that particular Strava \u2018segment\u2019 with a time of 8:57, set at last year\u2019s Milan-San Remo when he blew the field apart with a stunning volley of accelerations. Sub 9-minutes was until recently seen as a holy grail.<\/p>\n

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(Image credit: Strava)<\/p>\n

This new \u2018record\u2019 must be taken with a massive pinch of salt. For starters, it\u2019s not an official KOM but a \u2018personal record\u2019. The 8:57 KOM still stands, and that\u2019s because Poga\u010dar did not publicly upload his Tuesday ride, meaning it\u2019s not visible on his profile and his times on various segments are not visible on any leaderboards.<\/p>\n

He may be keen to keep a low profile but what\u2019s even more likely is that Poga\u010dar was motor-pacing up the climb. This is a common training method where riders sit in the slipstream of a motorbike driven by a coach, which helps adapt for high-speed scenarios and accelerations. Naturally, such efforts are invalid for the purposes of Strava\u2019s leaderboards, although many amateurs do try and get away with it, while other users angrily \u2018flag\u2019 suspicious activities.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s impossible to know how long Poga\u010dar was behind the moto, or whether he had other teammates with him, so it\u2019s impossible to put his time into context.<\/p>\n

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What\u2019s clear, though, is that he is once again preparing to drop a bomb on the Cipressa on March 21. For so many years, the Cipressa failed to have much of an impact on Milan-San Remo, with matters decided up and over the Poggio later on.<\/p>\n

However, Poga\u010dar\u2019s quest to land perhaps the most untameable of the Monuments in the past couple of years has ripped up the script. Last year was a landmark moment as he blew most of the peloton off his wheel with repeated accelerations on the climb. Most, but not all. Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech) and Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) clung grimly on and, after no further separation on the Poggio, Van der Poel took it out in a three-up sprint.<\/p>\n

Poga\u010dar knows he realistically needs to go one better and so solo over the Cipressa, which would give him wins in four of the five Monuments and further enshrine his status in the cycling annals. Much will depend on his teammates, who have failed to get into line from the very bottom of the Cipressa in recent years, and now count without injured teammates Tim Wellens and Jhonatan Narvaez.<\/p>\n

However, Poga\u010dar\u2019s latest visit to the Milan-San Remo course underlines the strength of his own appetite. <\/p>\n

So while he returns to Strade Bianche in search of a fourth victory on Saturday, you can perhaps sense that a first triumph at La Classicissima is what\u2019s truly firing him up this Spring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All eyes are on Tadej Poga\u010dar ahead of this weekend as the world champion prepares to kick off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-459353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459353","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=459353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}