You can win the world championships in many ways but you can only win them this way Tadej Pogacar. This time he left one hundred kilometers from the finish line. One hundred kilometers of escape to win a world championship, to write a story already written to do what they have only done before him Eddie Merckx And Stephen Rochethe only ones capable of winning the Giro, Tour and world championship in the same season. But in the end who cares comparisons, comparisons, stickers placed side by side to understand (which is impossible) who is the biggest, the best, the best, who would have come out on top if they had all been in a group at the same time. Pogacar is Pogacar, one and only. It is difficult to say whether he is more talented, stronger, more champion than others because in these few years (he has only 25) of dominance he has given such his own imprint to the races, to the victories, to the (rare) defeats and to his being the testimonial of a new cycling in the tactical and not just tactical attitude that cannot be compared to anyone. Pogacar attacks even when he shouldn’t, sprints even when he could save himself, wins and wins big but more than a cannibal he seems like a “revolutionary” who overturns the clichés of cycling as always. And so he does today in Zurich in this “tough” world championship of 273 kilometers with almost 4,500 meters of difference in altitude, with the Zürichbergstrasse, a 17 percent “slight climb”, to be repeated seven times. A long race, as befits a world championship, which after the start from Winterthur was thought to be uncertain, a challenge for two, perhaps three. And instead it is a World Cup with only one man in command, not with a blue and white shirt, but a green one with the colors of Slovenia. A fantastic world championship even if without history. Fantastic because companies like this are almost never seen, or rather never. Tadej Pogacar world champion ahead of the Australian Ben O’Connor and Dutch Mathieu van der Poel. The others far away and dispersed, almost not arriving starting from a very nervous one Remco Evenepoel who wastes more time sending to hell those who don’t give him changes to get back than pedaling to finish our Azzurri, who have never been in the race. But this is not the world championship of others but of only one. Tadej Pogacar who upon arrival has a tired face but rightly happy eyes: “I had put a lot of pressure on myself for this world championship and I had also put it on the whole team. At a certain point the race took a turn that I didn’t like and I thought I had to do something. I wasn’t sure what but luckily in the end I did the right thing. In the last kilometers I only thought about one thing: don’t give up…”. Thus Pogacar wins. This is how he won the Strade Bianche, this is how he won the Giro and the Tour. When he decides he leaves and goes. And the beauty is that it arrives in this ancient and very modern cycling. Pogacar is not Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinalt, Fausto Coppi, Jacques Anquetil, Miguel Indurain, Stephen Roche or Marco Pantani because he is an absolute champion born of his days. What is the point of comparisons backwards in time? Everything has changed: bikes, roads, nutrition, training. The culture of a sport has changed which fortunately remains well rooted in its history and memories but is also capable of dealing with the passing of time and understanding that between the champions of today and those of yesterday there is a world in between. It has nothing to do with it but not for a technical reason, because he pedals differently uphill, because he is stronger in the time trial because he also dominates the classics, because today we race with air helmets instead of bandanas. The difference is only in the look. Today tired but always irreverent and sunny. The serene look of someone who is writing a piece of cycling history with the lightness of someone who doesn’t take it easy and doesn’t even seem to take himself seriously. Here is the difference between Pogacar and all the others, perhaps it is precisely this: neither Cannibal, nor Pirate, nor Badger. Just look him in the eyes….