“He’s so deep in their heads they didn’t know what to do” – Jerome Pineau slams peloton response to Tadej Pogacar crash at Milano-Sanremo

Tadej Pogacar’s Milano-Sanremo victory is still being picked apart days later, not just for how he won, but for what the peloton failed to do when the race briefly tilted in their favour.

The decisive moment came before the Cipressa had even begun. Pogacar crashed on the approach to the climb, tearing his rainbow jersey and leaving himself several hundred metres behind the front of the race at a point where positioning is everything. For a brief window, the world champion was vulnerable.

It was a moment many expected rivals to seize. Instead, hesitation followed.

“The hesitation and the neutralisation at the start of the climb after Pogacar’s crash cost all those outsiders who could have taken advantage,” Jerome Pineau said in the Grand Plateau podcast, in comments reported by RMC. “Nobody would have blamed them if some had attacked and blown the race apart on the Cipressa without waiting for the Slovenian.”

With Pogacar out of position, the front of the race had a rare opportunity to reshape the outcome. Riders such as Filippo Ganna, Mads Pedersen and Tom Pidcock were already near the front, exactly where they needed to be.

But rather than accelerating, the race stalled. “It almost felt like they waited for him to come back before starting the race, and when he came back, he punished everyone,” Pineau added.

Pineau notes how the pace on the early slopes of the Cipressa dropped significantly in the moments after the crash, allowing UAE Team Emirates to reorganise and bring Pogacar back into contention. Once he returned to the front, the speed immediately lifted again, and with it, control of the race shifted back in his favour.

For Pineau, the issue was not just tactical, but psychological. “If that had been a proper Milano-Sanremo Cipressa, he would never have been able to come back like that. The first two kilometres of the Cipressa were the slowest in the past five or six years. They were watching each other. That never happens on the Cipressa.”

“He’s so deep in their heads that they didn’t know what to do," added the Frenchman. "They were thinking: I can’t attack, because if he comes back, he’ll hurt me. The result: he came back, and he hurt them.”

That hesitation proved decisive. Once Pogacar was back in position, the race returned to a more familiar pattern. He forced the selection on the Cipressa, dropped Mathieu van der Poel on the Poggio, and went on to decide the race ahead with Tom Pidcock on the Via Roma.

Milano-Sanremo rarely offers clear openings. When it does, they are often fleeting. Pogacar’s crash was one of those moments. A gap opened, positioning was disrupted, and for once, the favourite was on the back foot. But instead of capitalising, the peloton hesitated.

In the end, that hesitation defined the race just as much as Pogacar’s attack. Because, as Pineau’s assessment makes clear, in his opinion, the opportunity was there. The peloton simply did not take it.