Although he did not compose it nor was he the first to sing and record it, Frank Sinatra popularized the song My way. It was a version but everyone relates it to him. Something similar happens with Tadej Pogacar. It was not he who invented this way of winning, of attacking from a distance, of going it alone, of showing off and giving a show. But today the fans adjudicate it to the Slovenian champion. Pogacar runs to enjoy and he enjoys winning his way.
The last image of the leader of the UAE was raising his arms in Il Lombardia in October 2022. He had not competed in 2023. He made his debut this Monday in the classic Jaén Paraíso Interior in his always alternative calendar and between the olive trees and the dirt roads of Jaen, Pogacar used his most classic tactic. One that is only available to the chosen ones. Demarraje with more than 40 kilometers to go and whoever can follow him. In this case, no one.
It did not matter to him that there was a breakaway ahead, Sergio Samitier, and that the Movistar cyclist had a two-minute lead. He did not mind the hardness of the route designed by the coach Pascual Momparler or the mileage to Baeza. On the contrary, he motivated him. He was not expected even though his team had a majority in the main group. He was accompanied by Tim Wellens and Marc Hirschi. They could have made the selection differently. They could have approached and neutralized the Aragonese Samitier with a team effort.
But that's not the Pogacar way. The Slovenian took care of himself. In section 5 of sterrato, baptized Antonio Machado, he got down to work. He accelerated and left the rest shivering. He took off and drove off on his own. In less than four kilometers of dirt road he wiped out the breakaway advantage. She caught him and seeing that she could barely cooperate with him, she also abandoned him. "We had decided so in the reconnaissance the day before. We saw that the climb was hard and that we would test it there," he reflected.
The difference with the pursuers was growing and growing. It came to be two minutes. No one could overshadow him in the Andalusian classic. That was the distance was totally true, real. Such was the superiority that not even a puncture stopped him with 8 km to go. He changed bikes and continued with his recital as if nothing bothered him. In the end he finished with a minute ahead of everyone else. Wellens, third behind Ben Turner, and Hirschi, fourth, completed the festival.
One day of competition and already winning. This is the Pogacar style, which brightened, a lot, the second edition of the classic Jaén Paraíso Interior.
