Pogacar should’ve played more mind games with Van der Poel, says Zonneveld: “This was a desperate move”

From the start, UAE Team Emirates was in a tough spot. In Milan–San Remo, there are only a handful of moments where you can make a difference. “I get that they have to make a choice,” Zonneveld said. “They either attack on the Cipressa or the Poggio. There really aren’t any other places.” In the end, they opted for a move on the Cipressa—the longest and, on paper, toughest climb of the day. “The logic behind that makes sense: the longer the climb, the more it plays into his favor.”

But Van der Poel was able to follow on the penultimate ascent. The sports director of BEAT Cycling believes the Dutchman is currently unbeatable on short climbs. “Whether it’s a 2-minute, 4-minute, or 8-minute climb—especially with shallow gradients—he’s going to be there,” Zonneveld explained. “But if the climb lasts 20 minutes, Pogacar is better. So somewhere along the way, there’s a crossover point where Pogacar has the upper hand.”

Besides the length, the climbs in La Primavera simply aren’t steep enough. “They averaged 37.6 km/h over the Cipressa. That means the benefit of sitting in the draft is huge,” Zonneveld explained. “Pogacar would have to be significantly stronger than Van der Poel to drop him from his wheel. And there’s only one way to do that: the pace has to be so high, for so long, that everyone is on the limit. Then Pogacar has to go again. The way it went now, he had to attack too early.”

That’s a learning moment for UAE Team Emirates, says the 44-year-old former pro. By halfway up the Cipressa, Pogacar was already isolated. “In an ideal scenario, they’d want Del Toro to do a big final pull after that, so that Pogacar could go—not after five minutes, but after seven. Then he’d be closer to the moment where he might actually be able to drop Van der Poel.”

Van der Poel’s power on the Poggio in previous years was so intimidating that Pogacar’s camp had to come up with a new plan. Because beating Van der Poel over five and a half minutes? That’s just not going to happen. “He’s simply not going to manage that. So this was, in a way, a desperate move—a beautiful desperate move—because they saw last year that the Poggio alone isn’t enough. I actually think it’s a tactical step forward from UAE, one I didn’t expect from them.”

So while Zonneveld sees the tactical thinking from the UAE squad as a plus, he believes Pogacar himself came up short in that department. He relied too much on brute force and missed some tactical nuance. “That wasn’t very smart from Pogacar. He would’ve been better off making the others think he was suffering too. But he’s just not used to doing that in race finales. So instead, he just kept attacking, attacking, attacking.”

On the Cipressa, Pogacar couldn’t make the difference, so he continued on to the Poggio with Van der Poel and Filippo Ganna. “And the first thing he does, the moment he sees even the smallest gap, is attack again. Which is great, and makes perfect sense physically—he just wants to turn it into as long an effort as possible. But that first part of the climb isn’t ideal for attacking, because there are two or three tight hairpin turns.”

His raw power wasn’t enough, and Van der Poel’s race craft ultimately proved too much for Pogi. “There you really see the difference between the two: Van der Poel is used to riding all kinds of finales. Pogacar usually races in tough mountain stages where he’s almost always the strongest and can simply drop everyone. He’s not used to winning races—big and small—in other ways, from a young age. Van der Poel has done that his whole life, and he’s just so incredibly good at it.”