Cycling great Tadej Pogacar has demonstrated that he will be just as hard to beat in stage races as one-day classics this season as he swept to a magisterial win at the week-long Tour de Romandie.
Pogacar rode to overall victory in the Swiss race with his fourth stage win of the week on Sunday, proving too strong for potential Tour de France rival Florian Lipowitz on the rising roads into ski station Leysin.
The Slovenian star had come to Switzerland this week after winning Liege-Bastogne-Liege last Sunday, which was his third title in four coveted one-day classics in the European spring known as the Monuments.
Pogacar won Milan-San Remo, the Tour of Flanders and Liege-Bastogne-Liege, and was second in Paris-Roubaix.
He was attacked repeatedly in Sunday’s final stage by Lipowitz, who was third when the Slovenian rider won his fourth Tour de France title last year, in a duel through the final three kilometres.
But Pogacar eased clear in the closing stages to add three seconds on to a winning margin of 42 seconds overall. In third place overall, Frenchman Lenny Martinez was two minutes 44 seconds back.
It was the 27-year-old Pogacar’s first start at the Romandie race through the French-speaking region of Switzerland that’s an early-season trial for the Tour de France.
The double was done in three-straight years from 2011-13 by Cadel Evans, Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome.
There was an impressive week’s work from two Australians with Team Jayco AlUla’s Luke Plapp finishing fifth overall, 3:15 behind Pogacar, with promising 21-year-old Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe rider Luke Tuckwell a further place behind, one second adrift of Plapp.
