Was Tadej Pogačar’s Giro d’Italia victory boring? And does it matter?

The sight of Tadej Pogačar – clad in pink, tufts of his blonde-tinted fringe protruding from his cycling cap, his UAE Team Emirates colleagues watching on like a late 1990s Team Telekom tribute act – lifting the Trofeo Senza Fine, the never-ending trophy, in the Eternal City of Rome, proved a rather fitting image to mark the conclusion of one of the most interminable editions of the Giro d’Italia in recent memory.

Alright, maybe that’s a touch harsh.

But let’s face it – after taking the pink jersey and building a 45 second lead on the second stage to Oropa (after being shockingly bested in the sprint the previous day by non-script reading upstart Jhonatan Narváez), the relentless inevitability of Pogačar’s maiden Giro triumph this month was seemingly threatened by only two things. And they weren’t any of his rivals on the road.

One was the alarmingly red nose that dominated social media discussion in the middle of the race, fuelling ultimately unfounded rumours of a Remco-style withdrawal as sickness swept through the peloton (though to be fair, Bruce Springsteen has just postponed his upcoming Milan gigs due to illness, proving anything can happen in Italy to even the most indefatigable of performers).

The second centred on the bizarre scenes that circulated not long after the start of Saturday’s penultimate stage to Bassano del Grappa, as the Slovenian gestured theatrically at both his team car and the race’s medical vehicle. Was there something wrong? Has bad luck cruelly struck on the cusp of history? No. Pogačar was simply asking for some sunscreen wipes to combat the belatedly appearing Italian sunshine.

And that was that.

The pink panther strikes on Monte Grappa (Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

Even by the 25-year-old’s Cannibalesque standards, Pogačar was utterly relentless this Giro. He wore the pink jersey all the way from the second stage to Rome. He won six stages, including five in the maglia rosa, a record he now shares with Merckx himself. He won the mountains jersey by accident. For the most part, when he attacked it was like he was riding a different race, such was the indifference in the main GC group to his whims.

The UAE Team Emirates leader’s winning margin over Dani Martínez and his breakthrough grand tour ride was just four seconds shy of 10 minutes. Geraint Thomas, still battling with the best at 38, was 10.24 down in third. The top ten were separated by over 21 minutes, the top 15 by almost 40. For comparison, last year’s Giro top 10 was more closely packed in terms of time than the 2024 podium.

Thomas: Still going strong at 38 (Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

Viewed from a historical perspective, Pogačar’s dominance over all of his rivals is even more striking. Over the last two decades, only four editions of the Giro before this year were won by more than two minutes (eight, in fact, were won by less than a minute, and two by under 20 seconds).

Two of those were courtesy of a Vincenzo Nibali (a 4.43 winning margin over Rigoberto Urán in 2013) and a Nairo Quintana (2.58 over Urán in 2014) at their peak.

The other two saw pre-Puerto Ivan Basso inflict a 9.18 demolition job on José Enrique Gutiérrez, while at the ill-fated 2011 Giro Alberto Contador beat Michele Scarponi by 6.10. But Contador ended up losing that title thanks to his clenbuterol positive at the previous year’s Tour, so the official winning margin now stands at 46 seconds, anyway.

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Of course, the scale of Pogačar’s dominance quickly resulted in a flurry of social media tirades, accusing the Slovenian of the worst thing a pro cyclist can do in 2024 – making a race boring. Oh, how times have changed.

Even before the Giro – his first grand tour win for almost three years, I’ll remind you – Pogačar’s face was plastering the dartboards of fans hungry for suspense and intrigue, and finding it sorely lacking in his historic, long-range spring classic winning moves.

In April, after the UAE Team Emirates rider soloed to a processional Liège-Bastogne-Liège triumph, one writer for another UK-based cycling outlet even claimed, thanks to the Pog and MVDP-athon that was the spring campaign, “men’s cycling has never been more bleak for fans” (You want bleak? Try the yellow jersey being kicked off the race days from Paris, 12 months after the Tour winner who made it to Paris was stripped of his win days later. That was bleak).

Yes, Pogačar is crushingly dominant (At the moment. Remember, it was the Slovenian on the wrong end of a cricket score at last year’s Tour). But is he boring?

(Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

First off, it’s hard to argue against this year’s Giro, the victim of an odd, largely toothless route designed to woo a Giro-Tour double chasing Pog (even before the Stelvio’s snowy omission), being a bit of a snore fest.

The top four on GC after the difficult stage seven time trial to Perugia – Pogačar, Martínez, Thomas, and Ben O’Connor – would remain locked in that order all the way to Rome, save for a brief game of leapfrog between Thomas and Martínez at the end of the second week.

But that GC ennui wasn’t Pogačar’s fault. He remained attacking, swashbuckling to the last, not content to sit back and let the rest fight over the crumbs. He didn’t just smash the Giro to pieces, he raced it.

Basically bike races, and especially grand tours, can be won in three ways.

There’s the dramatic, tight, nip-and-tuck battle. Think 1989. Or Pogačar last-gasp debut Tour win in 2020. Then there’s the historic, unrelenting, era-defining acts of supremacy, a la Coppi, Merckx, or Pogačar’s 2021 Tour victory. In the moment, fans prefer the former, naturally, but come to appreciate the latter down the line, as a fundamental part of the sport’s heritage.

The third way, of course, is when a rider or team has such an imperious grip on the race that they impose a suffocating stranglehold on it, usually exemplified by an early display of shock and awe followed by two weeks of unerring control. You know, the US Postal or Sky template. Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates are yet to adopt that method, thankfully. Yet.

Come July, cycling fans will prove themselves a fickle bunch, as they will Mark Cavendish – the most dominant sprinter in the sport’s history – towards that record breaking 35th Tour stage win, weeks after bemoaning Pogačar (once again, on his way to a first grand tour win since 2021) laying another set of foundations for his own bourgeoning legacy.

In any case, this Giro still had plenty to offer the neutral in terms of excitement – the return of Alaphilippe the swashbuckler, the emergence of a proper Italian hope in Giulio Pellizzari, the breakaway exploits of Georg Steinhauser.

And, even if your eyes were in danger of closing together for most of this year’s Corsa Rosa, don’t worry. Because, the recovery times of injured favourites notwithstanding, there’s always July and France to come. Now, what’s happened there the last few years?