Tadej Pogacar celebrates winning the race in Zurich, Switzerland, on Sunday. Reuters

The 26-year-old Slovenian won the 273km race around Zurich in a time of 6hr 27min 30sec, with Australia’s Ben O’Connor at 34sec and Dutch one-day specialist Mathieu van der Poel in third at 58sec.

Pogacar wrote himself into the history books with an unorthodox long-range attack, rarely seen at this level, to join Ireland’s Stephen Roche from 1987 and Belgian Eddy Merckx from 1974 as a men’s triple crown champion.

Annemiek van Vleuten achieved the women’s triple in 2022.

Pogacar attacked with a sudden and unanswered acceleration 100km out, with Slovenian team-mate Jan Tratnik dropping back from an escape group to pace him to the head of the race — a position he would never relinquish.

“It looked like a stupid attack but I came here for the victory and luckily I made it, I never gave up,” Pogacar said.

“All these years I’ve been targeting the Tour de France, and not the world title, which I’ve never won before, but this year all fell into place.

“We had plans to keep the race under control but the race went quite early and I don’t know what I was thinking but I went with the flow and luckily I made it,” he added.

Any race with Pogacar, Van der Poel and double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel could expect to be hotly contested and this proved to be the case.

Evenepoel’s entire Belgian team had built up a head of steam at the front of the peloton to keep the Tour-Giro champion within touching distance for two tense hours.

“If you speak in normal ways, you’d think it was a suicidal move and we were coming closer on the last lap, but when we were at 30 seconds or so he was going downhill so he managed to keep the lead,” said Evenepoel.

Evenepoel was frequently frustrated during the race, waving his arms at other riders to take up some of the work foisted upon him in the chase.

Pavel Sivakov, a Pogacar team-mate at UAE, rode out ahead with the winner for around 40km before the maverick triple Tour de France winner put the hammer down and went for it alone.

Pogacar skipped the Olympics to target the triple crown, which he sealed with this win over a 273km course that suited him with its short punchy climbs and kicks at 12 percent.

Van der Poel said he was proud of his performance.

“I thought it was quite a stupid move to be honest, to go from that far with the groups behind controlling the race, but he proved us wrong,” added the 29-year-old.

For O’Connor, the silver medal result caps a solid season after he led the Vuelta a Espana for 12 days.

“Tactics, being smart, I dunno what you can put it down to but I found a great moment and as soon as you have a gap you have to commit,” he said.

The 2020 and 2021 world champion Julian Alaphilippe fell and dislocated his shoulder after an hour, while other fancied riders in Spain’s Mikel Landa and Denmark’s Mattias Skjelmose dropped out.

This season has confirmed the Slovenian’s status as a generational talent since, unusually for a cyclist, he can win races of almost any length and on different terrains. That includes one-day races like the world championships, which require an explosiveness normally sacrificed by Tour de France contenders in favor of the endurance needed to win a three-week stage race.

The 25-year-old has previously won one-day classics including the Tour of Flanders, the Giro di Lombardia and Liege-Bastogne-Liege.

The race set off at 11 in the morning (local time) from the widely pedestrianised town of Winterthur and included seven laps around Zurich, with a challenging 4,470 metres of elevation that was expected to favour the more slender riders.

Agencies