The World Championships show that these teams will be gunning for the (early) breakaway at the Tour of Lombardy

With major teams like UAE Emirates-XRG, Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe, Visma | Lease a Bike, and Decathlon CMA CGM in the mix, there’s still a chance that the big names on the start list will go all out on Saturday. Isaac del Toro, Remco Evenepoel, Matteo Jorgenson, and Paul Seixas will all benefit from a tough race.

At the same time, no team will be as confident of victory as the UAE team has been in recent years with Pogacar. The team knew exactly what it had to do and, as a result, guided Pogacar to victory with ease for five years in a row. Del Toro and world champion Brandon McNulty can hope for the same treatment, but will they be able to break away solo in the final stretch, just like Pogacar?

The World Championships in Montreal showed that an early attack can pay off. McNulty won with a solo breakaway of over 30 kilometers, but some big names, such as Mathieu van der Poel, attacked as early as 80 kilometers from the finish. Riders from the early breakaway managed to hang on for a while and thus made it into the final.

For the Tour of Lombardy, many teams without a true leader will be hoping for a similar scenario. Take Soudal Quick-Step, for example, which has four riders—Mikel Landa, Mauri Vansevenant, Gianmarco Garofoli, and Maximilian Schachmann—who will have to push hard early on if they want to have a chance at a good result.

"We've already won Il Lombardia twice and achieved other great results, so we want to be in the mix again," said team director Davide Bramati in a press release. "It’s a very challenging race, but that doesn’t scare us. It motivates us to give it our all so we can come away with another good result."

In addition to The Wolfpack, there are other teams that have the strength to make it to the final, but may not have a clear-cut leader to wait for that to happen. Picnic PostNL and Bardiani have rosters in which several riders may be tasked with breaking away early.

When it comes to Picnic PostNL, think of Gijs Leemreize and Frank van den Broek from the Dutch contingent, but also James Knox and Warren Barguil. Bardiani is counting on Martin Marcellusi, who’s in top form, but Manuele Tarozzi, Filippo Turconi, and Alex Tolio are also riders we can expect to see at the front in the first hour.