A hand that takes him straight into history. Five in a row. Best of all, even better than Fausto Coppi who won five Giri di Lombardia but not in a row. Now all that remains is the absolute record and there is a year left, because Tadej Pogacar now races to break records, to fill the missing boxes, for a story that for now sees him absent only at Sanremo and Roubaix. The 119th edition of the Giro di Lombardia is in the name of the Slovenian champion who puts himself behind another enormous champion like Remco Evenepoel who fights, who doesn’t give up, who if it weren’t for the phenomenona Uae this year would have signed a season to remember and Michael Store, third and “first” among the normal riders.

A formidable feat by Pogacar. Because winning five Lombardias in a row is something that is hard to even imagine and why it wasn’t, even if it might seem like that, a victory on velvet. Making life difficult for him, in addition to the Belgian Olympian, is a gigantic Quinn Simmons, with the beard and mustache of an American on a trip, who leaves after the first kilometre, who at a certain point abandons his 14 escape companions including our Filippo Ganna, who manages to take up to a three and a half minute lead, who 30 kilometers from the finish line also believes he can beat his majesty and is caught again after more than two hundred kilometers, still placing fourth. This 24-year-old from Colorado is no slouch: he has already won a world championship as a junior and this year a stage in the Tour of Switzerland which he dedicated to Gino Mader, who was in front of him during the descent that was fatal to him. Today he chased away a few ghosts.

“To win this race five times in a row, it’s fantastic, it’s an incredible day. I want to thank the whole team, especially Rafal Majka who retires today.” Tadej Pogacar shouts it into the microphone of the motorbike that joins him on the descent towards Bergamo and repeats it at the finish line, greeting his trusty Polish gregarious who he will miss, and how he will miss him. The Uae captain concludes a record season with twenty victories, with the tenth monument placed on the board with a Tour, a world title and a European one: “I have no regrets” he comments to the Rai microphones. And God forbid.

Even today Tadej Pogacar does what he has accustomed us to doing in his Martian cycling. He doesn’t win, he dominates with an ease that makes everything seem almost normal. But that’s not normal. “We are faced with an extraordinary champion because perhaps we don’t fully realize what it means to win 5 Giri di Lombardia in a row – explains Mauro Gianetti, team principal of the UAE – A champion who I don’t know when we will ever see again and therefore we just have to enjoy him…”. To say that everything else leaves the time it finds, that in front of so much class, so much beauty, so much competitive splendor it is difficult to find adjectives and the word boredom has no place. You just have to applaud. And that’s what the thousands and thousands of fans who were there at Lombardia did today.