DISCUSSION European Championships Men's Road Race | Did Belgium's tactics gift the win to Tadej Pogacar? Why can't Jonas Vingegaard perform in one-day races?

The European Championships men’s road race 2025 featured a hard route with plenty of categorized climbs and a star-studded start list, as very few top European riders were missing. The presence of the big three – Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel – for the first time in a one day race since Flèche Wallonne 2022 promised an exciting showdown between the three superstars.

Three riders went down the road soon after the start of the race: Mathijs Paaschens, Daan Hoole and Mathias Vacek. They would be subsequently joined by a chasing group of around 20 riders, including important men such as Nicolas Prodhomme, Louis Vervaeke, Marco Frigo or Niklas Larsen.

The race situation stabilized in the following kilometres, with Slovenia controlling the bunch as expected in order to help their leader. However, a major shock took place during the second climb to Côte de Saint-Romain-de-Lerps (7km à 7.2%), when Jonas Vingegaard lost contact with the peloton.

Even if the Dane has never excelled at one-day races, it was completely unexpected to see him struggling that much that early in the day, with still more than 100km to go.

Domen Novak kept pacing, but it didn’t last long until attacks unfolded. Pavel Sivakov was the first to try, and Remco Evenepoel continued pushing after catching the French rider, reducing the group of favourites to less than 10 units.

Even if they were caught in the descent, the survivors in peloton were no more than 25, with Pogacar being completely isolated, as all of his teammates were far behind. Belgium, on the other hand, had four members, while France had five.

However, they didn’t have the opportunity to take advantage of that, given that Pogacar launched a devastating attack in the final ascent to Saint-Romain-de-Lerps that, as usual, nobody could follow. The Slovenian went solo with 75km to go and that was the last time his rivals could see him before arriving to the finish line.

The main point of interest turned to the silver and bronze medals. A small 4-rider group had been established in pursuit of Pogacar, including Evenepoel, Ayuso, Seixas and Scaroni. Evenepoel took most of the responsibility to chase, but with around 30km to go, he decided to fly alone and distanced from the other three riders, arriving in second place 30 seconds behind Pogacar.

The battle for the bronze was intense, and Ayuso was the first man to succumb to the hard effort, dropping in the final climb. Seixas and Scaroni continued fighting, and it was the 19-year-old French wonder kid who emerged victorious and secured bronze.

Once the race finished, we asked some of our writers to share their thoughts and main takeaways about what happened today.

You can try whatever you want if you’re not on Tadej Pogacar’s team. In the end, he’ll choose his moment to attack on the climb and drop everyone.

The Belgians rode a flawless tactical race for Remco Evenepoel. Four of them were in front when Pogacar attacked uphill. What should you do if you’re Remco? Let him go and hope for the three other Belgians? Those guys were already half dead by then. There’s only one option: follow Pogacar.

But the Belgian will always have a brief moment when he hits his limit. It’s short — just a few minutes in the red, when the legs start to burn. That’s Mother Nature speaking. It will take Red Bull a lot of science and patience to push that moment out of Evenepoel’s body. Mother Nature simply gave the Slovenian more power.

She decided to do the same some nineteen years ago for Paul Seixas. We could witness it today. The way the teenager shook off Scaroni, and earlier Ayuso, was pure class.

Cycling fans might say that at 75 km from the finish line, races are already over these days. They are not. If you finish second, third, or even fifth like Skuijns, we should still admire Europe’s best. The Cycling Gods will agree and will sometimes wonder where the Germans are in all of this. Our road is long. Very long.

Ah, how nice it is to watch a cycling race without the police. A European championship without the police is something else. And the television broadcast? The best I've ever seen. The UEC sells the television rights to Eurosport, which treated us to the Cro Race all week long. Congratulations, Mr Lappartient, for selling the image of cycling like no one else. Mediocre.

As for the race itself, I'll stick to what I saw on television. And what did Eurosport show? A 70 km time trial by Pogacar against the world, European and Paris Olympic champion. The Slovenian thrashed the Belgian. Paul Seixas beat Scaroni and Juanito and secured the bronze for France, which had three men in the top 10.

Did anyone see a certain Vingegaard in France? The king of wheel sucking broke down more than 100 km from the finish line. Let's just say that Denmark must regret having selected him. The lad left his wife and son at home doing the housework and abandoned the race early to catch a plane that would take him close to home, so that Trine wouldn't tell him off.

Come on, bring on Il Lombardia so we can watch another cannibalistic performance by Pogui. Bets are being taken on how many kilometres from the finish line he will attack the race. I'll give you my guess a week in advance: 80 km.

This is Tadej Pogacar's world, and we are merely living in it. Yet another exhibition for the Slovenian and one of the few major titles missing from his already legendary list of achievements.

Juan Ayuso's excellent performance deserves a mention, as he was in contention for the podium for many kilometers. Remco Evenepoel experienced the same old story in one-day races where he competes against Pogacar, finishing as the best of the rest.

Finally, I want to tip my hat to Paul Seixas' performance. At just 19 years old, the Frenchman continues to prove race after race that he has everything it takes to be a superstar in this sport and the leader of a 2006 generation that is already giving people a lot to talk about.

Belgium’s tactics were very questionable once again. It was a similar situation to what happened in Rwanda actually. There, they controlled the race and imposed a hard tempo until Mont Kigali in order to leave Pogacar isolated. Today, they attacked first with Evenepoel with 100km to go to eliminate all the Slovenian domestiques and then kept hard pacing until the last ascent to Saint-Romain-de-Lerps.

In both cases they were just doing the job for Pogacar by controlling the race and carrying him in a first-class seat to his launch pad, where he just attacked and sealed the race. Belgium believed for some reason that eliminating every Slovenian rider would affect Pogacar, but then they did the exact same job that Slovenian domestiques would have in case they hadn’t been dropped.

So, Belgium basically became Slovenia 2.0, helping Pogacar by keeping a hard pace throughout the stage to avoid attacks and cause damage in the legs of everyone.

After Rwanda’s failure, why didn’t they try something different today? Why didn’t they send some of the domestiques ahead instead? At that point of the race, having Pogacar isolated is a great outcome for the rest of the teams because he cannot close every attack. If no team is controlling the race, and attacks are happening left and right, Pogacar has a much harder time, as he cannot be everywhere.

France and Belgium had 4 and 5 riders respectively, so they had the numbers to try that. Let a group go clear and then sit on the wheel of Pogacar. He has constantly proved he is just stronger than everyone else, so you cannot go to war one vs one against him.

Make use of your teammates, make alliances with other teams and force him to work. Create chaos so what has been the natural order recently (Pogacar attacks – Pogacar goes solo – Pogacar wins) changes. Pogacar has a much weaker team when riding with the national team compared to other teams, so it is the perfect place to beat him. Yet no team took advantage of that, which is disappointing.

Vingegaard’s abandon was pretty surprising for me. Not because I thought he could defeat Pogacar, especially knowing his record in one-day races (just 1 victory at the Drôme Classic in 2022), but because it was too early. He had a successful yet difficult end of the season (he was sick throughout the Vuelta) but still came to the Europeans. For no reason actually, as his shape was far from good.

Why can’t he perform in one-day races in the same way he does in stage races? It is such a mystery, and after what happened today, I don’t think we will see him representing the Danish national team in the near future.