ZURICH (AFP) – Tadej Pogacar added the world road race title to his Tour de France and Giro d'Italia victories on Sunday to become the first man since 1987 to win cycling's triple crown in the same season.
The 26-year-old Slovenian won the 273km race around Zurich in a time of 6hr 27min 30sec, with Australia's Ben O'Connor at 34sec and Dutch one-day specialist Mathieu van der Poel in third at 58sec.
Pogacar wrote himself into the history books with an unorthodox long-range attack, rarely seen at this level, to join Ireland's Stephen Roche from 1987 and Belgian Eddy Merckx from 1974 as a men's triple crown champion.
Annemiek van Vleuten achieved the women's triple in 2022.
After his victory, Pogacar reflected on the death on Friday of 18-year-old Swiss cyclist Muriel Furrer, who had fallen when competing in the junior road race.
"It's a tragedy, first of all obviously for her family and loved ones, for the Swiss team, but also for the whole cycling community," the Slovenian told his press conference.
"This weekend, everyone raced thinking about her.
"Cycling is a dangerous sport and has become even more so in recent years. It's happened too often.
"We need to be more careful on the road, think about each other when riding in a peloton, look out for each other, respect each other," he added.
In the race, Pogacar attacked with a sudden and unanswered acceleration 100km out, with Slovenian team-mate Jan Tratnik dropping back from an escape group to pace him to the head of the race -- a position he would never relinquish.
"It looked like a stupid attack but I came here for the victory and luckily I made it, I never gave up," Pogacar said.
"All these years I've been targeting the Tour de France, and not the world title, which I've never won before, but this year all fell into place."
Any race with Pogacar, Van der Poel and double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel could expect to be hotly contested and this proved to be the case.
"If you speak in normal ways, you'd think it was a suicidal move and we were coming closer on the last lap, but when we were at 30 seconds or so he was going downhill so he managed to keep the lead," said Evenepoel.
Evenepoel was frequently frustrated during the race, waving his arms at other riders to take up some of the work foisted upon him in the chase.
Pavel Sivakov, a Pogacar team-mate at UAE, rode out ahead with the winner for around 40km before the maverick triple Tour de France winner went for it alone.
Pogacar skipped the Olympics to target the triple crown, which he sealed with this win over a 273km course that suited him with its short punchy climbs.
Van der Poel said he was proud of his performance.
"I thought it was quite a stupid move to be honest, to go from that far with the groups behind controlling the race, but he proved us wrong," said the 29-year-old.
For O'Connor, the silver medal result caps a solid season after he led the Vuelta a Espana for 12 days.
"Tactics, being smart, I dunno what you can put it down to but I found a great moment and as soon as you have a gap you have to commit," he said.
The 2020 and 2021 world champion Julian Alaphilippe fell and dislocated his shoulder after an hour, while other fancied riders in Spain's Mikel Landa and Denmark's Mattias Skjelmose dropped out.