“The next Eddy Merckx” – Horner in awe of Tadej Pogacar’s Il Lombardia win

Tadej Pogacar turned Il Lombardia into a formality, and Chris Horner’s running commentary captured both the scenery and the inevitability of yet another Pogacar demolition. “This is the last and final of the five Monument races for the 2025 season,” he began, framing the day and its stakes. He set the mood of the race as only someone who’s lived it can: “It is the race of the falling leaves. It is the most beautiful of all the five Monuments, there’s no doubt about that.” Beauty soon gave way to reality: “When you come here to Lombardia, you’ve got to battle against one Pogacar, and he’s got four back-to-back victories here. He’s trying to go for five.”

Horner made clear how unprecedented the target was. “Nobody has ever won five back-to-back.” And the reigning two time world champion arrived in the form to do it. “We know Tadej Pogacar just got done winning the men’s road world championships in Rwanda,” he said, reminding listeners that the Slovenian’s end-of-season level hadn’t dipped. The stage was set; the script, familiar.

Early chaos gave the broadcast its spark. “Quinn Simmons is lighting this course on fire,” Horner said, as the Stars and Stripes jersey went from the gun, survived the shuffle, and insisted on shaping the race from the front. It gave viewers something to cling to while the peloton behind, marshalled by UAE, wound up the pace for the decisive climb. There was also the Horner-style jab at tactics he found baffling: “BORA–Hansgrohe are gonna help UAE Team Emirates… This is a complete knucklehead move.” The critique echoed what many were thinking; why assist the team that needs no help when the favourite is waiting to strike?

Horner kept a ledger of the work done to make the finale inevitable. “Tip of the hat here to Sivakov, he rode about 90 kilometers on the front.” The attrition felt deliberate rather than chaotic: peel the race down to the core, ensure the approach to Passo di Ganda is tidy, and make the launch uncontested. When the moment arrived, Horner didn’t bother with flourish. “Now it’s time for Pogi Show.” It was the line of the day: not prediction, but confirmation.

The how matters in Lombardia, and Horner drilled into one small but telling mistake as the climb ignited. “You never let anyone between the wheel of you and Tadej Pogacar.” In that split-second positioning choice, the elastic snapped. From there, the math was simple: Pogacar out front, gap measured, descent on rails, and the rest calculating for minor places.

He saved special praise for Simmons, whose long day bought him the right to hang on when the champion swept past. “It was a remarkable ride,” Horner said, shifting the American’s early aggression from “knucklehead” risk into a savvy way to beat the script for everyone else, if not to win, then to prove a point about courage and legs at a Monument.

The conclusion was never in doubt, “Number one ranked rider in the world. The next Eddy Merckx, safe to say right now,” Horner offered, putting the performance in a lineage that needs no decoration. And then the finish line: “Congratulations on your fifth back-to-back win here at Il Lombardia.”

Horner’s final verdict on what Lombardia really is, and why Pogacar owns it, hinges on the profile. “This is a GC race, there’s no doubt about it.” It is long, relentlessly technical, and stacked with climbs that expose any weakness in pacing, position, or nerve. In that environment, a Tour-winning engine with world-class handling and a drilled squad is almost impossible to unseat. The attacks can come early and often, the break can be heroic, and rivals can hope for hesitation. But if they give him an inch, or a wheel, Lombardy belongs to one rider.