"I hoped to follow those two, but I am simply too heavy for those climbs" - Filippo Ganna needs to adjust tactics after E3
Cycling
A podium at E3 Saxo Classic is more than acceptable result for Filippo Ganna. After all it's the 28-year-old's best result in a cobbled classic. However the INEOS Grenadiers star aims for more than that, especially at Paris-Roubaix which should suit him better without all those steep Belgian "Murs".
Today he tried to keep up with Mathieu van der Poel and Mads Pedersen, but Ganna quickly learnt that physics indeed do work on steep slopes of Oude Kwaremont when the two left Ganna far behind. "It cost me too much energy," he could still laugh a little in post-race interview.
"I hoped to follow those two, because you hope to do everything right in such a race, but I am simply too heavy for those climbs with those guys. That is why I am very happy with this performance. In the last kilometers I was deep in the red zone, but I had to keep riding…"
"I don’t know how to describe it," Ganna said about the pain he felt on the Kwaremont, where Van der Poel and Pedersen rode away from him. "My legs were on fire. And at the top I saw that it was still 30 kilometers. F*ck, I thought then, because I still had more than half an hour to go… It was very hard, but I’m happy, because my form is good. I’m not the best rider for those steep hills, but I mixed it up and showed myself."
Results of 2025 E3 Saxo Classic:
| Position | Rider | Team | Time |
| 01 | van der Poel Mathieu | Alpecin-Deceuninck | 04:38:11 |
| 02 | Pedersen Mads | Lidl-Trek | + 01:05 |
| 03 | Ganna Filippo | INEOS Grenadiers | + 02:04 |
| 04 | Pedersen Casper | Soudal Quick-Step | + 02:33 |
| 05 | Stuyven Jasper | Lidl-Trek | + 02:33 |
| 06 | Küng Stefan | Groupama-FDJ | + 02:33 |
| 07 | De Gendt Aimé | Cofidis | + 02:33 |
| 08 | Wellens Tim | UAE Team Emirates-XRG | + 02:35 |
| 09 | Jorgenson Matteo | Team Visma | Lease a Bike | + 02:38 |
| 10 | Teunissen Mike | XDS Astana Team | + 02:43 |
Great that he’s decided to do Flanders though his weight remark is irrelevant, Mads is proportionately heavier and MVDP has the same weight but is around 10cm shorter.
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- i wouldn't count Pogi out. Low probability of a win, but not impossiblemobk01-04-2025
- Right now it doesn't seem that his legs are there or that his head is in the racevappaxbipmv01-04-2025
- would have been nice to hear exactly WHY he thinks pog has zero chance in some greater detail. i mean, tend to agree that his chances aren’t GREAT, but some explanation from the expert with an opinion would be nice. MINE is that, in spite of the recon he did where tadej concluded that the course “wasn’t that hard” i think that doing the full route at full gas is really going to beat up pogacar’s 145lb body, to a degree that he maybe isn’t expecting. but hey, we’ll see in a couple weeks. like everyone else, i do think it’s supercool that he’s going.OCexile01-04-2025
- Go back to that era and look at the lousy mechanicals he's had at Paris-Roubaix. Take those away, maybe he has another Monument, Van der Poel has one less, and suddenly all the rules change. Those mechanicals preceded his awful crashes - and you're right, that Tour was amazing. Ventoux, TT, and Champs-Elysees?! Something that Pogacar and Van der Poel can't do, just Wout. It still amazes me.RidesHills01-04-2025
- Oh, the impossibility of this kind of comparison. A pre-WW2 Binda had amazing statistics, and that was one era. During what I think of as the romantic era, Poulidor had an incredible run at the Tour without winning, and Bobet won some grand tours and some Monuments. In this modern era (for me: after Hinault), we've had multiple Monument winners win a grand tour (such as Valverde and Kelly, with Kelly the better rider in general), and then we've got someone like Roglic, the true GC rider. Sure there was a Monument that was kind of a fluke (both Pogacar and Hirschi might have won, and twitchy Alaphilippe deserved relegation), but what matters are the 5 grand tours and all these wins across the 1 week GC races except for the Tour de Suisse (you'd think he'd race it to get the set of them all). In this era, since 2000 or so, maybe he meets the description as best non-Tour winner. How many GC riders have these wins and not the Tour? To compare to other eras really is not possible. He's his own unique rider, and it's been amazing watching him for the past many years. That's about all we can say.RidesHills01-04-2025
- Ease up on a brother!bobo01-04-2025
- Primoz finds ways to win. Too bad he'll never take Tour de France.awp01-04-2025
- I don't think I would ever count Wout van Aert out of a race if his head is in it. He is a serious talent.awp01-04-2025
- He's a great rider for sure, not sure if he the best to never win the Tour though.awp01-04-2025
- Hard to imagine that his confidence - that imperious flow state that great athletes operate in - hasn't been affected. But that is a different dynamic than the one you described. He has not become hesitant because he is fixated on his rival. He has suffered multiple traumatic injuries, and I have no doubt he is still 1% off both mentally and physically as a result. Football (both kinds) and basketball players who blow out knees go through a predictable cycle in which they are reluctant to do max efforts even after their doctors have cleared them. I myself went though a small version of that after a back injury. It's just hard once you no longer know where the line is. We saw in his TT a couple weeks ago that he still has power, and for all the hand wringing he is still finishing in the top 10-20 of big races. But as we have seen with others, getting *all* the way back is not assured. I'm not ready to say he is done, but few riders who have been hurt as often and as badly as him remain at the top.MidnightRider01-04-2025