Tadej Pogacar can match Fausto Coppi in another historic achievement this week in Italy

The 2024 season is coming to an end. It will be remembered as the year of Tadej Pogacar. Although being only 26 years old, it is possible that he will improve it in the future, but it seems difficult. In this final stretch, the UAE Team Emirates superstar is once again facing history. He could achieve something that only Fausto Coppi has achieved, on only one occasion, in 1948.

It's about winning the three most prestigious Italian autumn classics. Pogacar has already won the Giro dell'Emilia, giving an umpteenth exhibition and becoming the fifth cyclist in history to debut the world champion's jersey with a victory. But he will also be the favorite at the start of the Tre Valli Varesine and Il Lombardia, where he is looking for his fourth consecutive victory. An achievement in which he would also equal... Fausto Coppi as the two riders with the most consecutive Lombardia editions.

Pogi already knows what it is to win Tre Valli Varesine, so this past Saturday he joined the club of those who have won all three. But now he aspires to join Coppi, doing it in the same year. In 2022 he already came close, but Enric Mas beat him in the Giro dell'Emilia. The difference with the Italian cycling legend is that in his time, the first of the three classics was Tre Valli Varesine and was contested two months earlier.

At the time he beat his historic rival, Gino Bartali, arriving in a group of nine riders for the final sprint. In the Giro dell'Emilia, Coppi took 40 seconds off his main pursuer, the Italian Vittorio Rossello. Finally, at Il Lombardia, he made a real exhibition, Pogacar style, taking 4:45 minutes on the group that crossed the finish line behind him, where there were 9 riders to fight for the two remaining places on the final podium.