"A lot of riders are able to survive the first attack of Pogacar" - Nathan van Hooydonck explains Tadej Pogacar's Milano-Sanremo hoodoo

When Tadej Pogacar sets his sights on winning a race, there is usually only one outcome - the Slovenian crossing the finish line with his arms aloft in celebration. For that reason, the lack of success Pogacar has had at Milano-Sanremo over the years sticks out as a point of note. So just why has the UAE Team Emirates - XRG leader found winning Milano-Sanremo so difficult?

Well according to former Team Visma | Lease a Bike rider and now Eurosport pundit Nathan van Hooydonck, the answer is actually pretty simple. Milano-Sanremo is simply too easy for Pogacar to create real separation. "It's not hard enough for him, I think. He's definitely the strongest rider of his generation, the most versatile rider of his generation, but this race is super long, the concentration of difficulty is completely towards the final [parts of the race]," explains the Belgian on TNT Sports' Ultimate Cycling Show.

"It's difficult, but not too difficult, and a lot of riders are able to survive the first attack of Pogacar, some people are even able to match that attack," Van Hooydonck adds. "Whenever somebody is able to match that attack, tactics are going to play a role and then the race can go either way."

All of the talk surrounding Pogacar's Milano-Sanremo quest this year is about the Cipressa, a climb that is normally considered too early to make the winning move at Milano-Sanremo. "He's trying [to win it], he tries every year. On the Cipressa, the climb before the Poggio, it's a longer and harder climb than what the Poggio is," adds former British national champion Adam Blythe. "The last two years, he's really tried on there to split things up. But there's such a gap between the climbs where it's on the coast, and there's not enough climbing on there to make it hard, the groups will probably always come back together."

"For me, that's his problem. If it was closer together, he could attack earlier on the Cipressa. But I think there's 15 or 11 kilometres in between those climbs. It's a chance for him to recover, but it's also a chance for the sprinters to recover as well," continues Blythe. "If you can follow the first attack of Tadej, then it becomes a tactical battle, but when there are more people involved in a tactical battle, it becomes increasingly hard to win, because there's one rider going this way, one rider going that way, whereas Tadej has got one job to do and all eyes, sadly for him, are on that one move, so it becomes increasingly harder for him to win."

So ultimately, whilst Blythe doesn't fully rule Pogacar out (who would!?), the Brit doesn't believe the world champion will prevail this weekend. "I think it's becoming increasingly harder for him to get away because riders are changing the way they're training, becoming adapted to races such as this," he concludes. "I don't think he can't win it, but it's going to be harder and harder and harder to win it."

"He can definitely win it," Van Hooydonck insists in response to Blythe. "The Cipressa is the climb coming just before the Poggio, but the Cipressa is hard enough if you can ride a very fast pace from the bottom to the top. Tadej Pogacar cannot do it by himself, he needs his team to do so."

"His team needs to pace as fast as possible from the bottom to the top and that's how you can put the different sprinters under pressure and you can already distance them," he concludes. "Once he gets his team-mates over the Cipressa and onto the Poggio, they can again start riding a very, very fast pace and then he can launch the decisive attack."