World Championships 2024 Zürich ***SPOILERS***

Yep, that's a good summary. It was Tratnik V Belgium (mainly/only Campenaerts) for a while, they had three or four riders at the front. The front group was pegged there at 35-45 seconds I think (chapeau Tratnik) and it looked like it had been a daft move. Nobody else would work with Pog until he jumped and a couple tried to follow (Simmons? and Sivakov). Sivakov couldn't hold his wheel and Pog waited, though he was as much use as a chocolate teapot for about twenty minutes after that, then did a few small turns, then popped.

Worth noting again that the front group was the early break plus the new break that had originally had a lieutenant from each of the big teams except Netherlands and Spain - they were quality names, just not the team captains. MvdP was disastrously slow to react to that, they did little to no work to pull it back and it became clear that both Pog and Remco would eventually try and jump over to a helper up the road, while MvdP would have nobody. May also be worth wondering how much the lack of race radios affected this - did the Netherlands piss about so long because they didn't know who'd gone? Did they not know they were the big losers? That group worked OK, though both Tratnik and whoever Belgium had (can't remember offhand) sat in. Perhaps if Netherlands had chased they'd have gone to the front and burnt out a few of MvdP's helpers.

Slovenia then set about shrinking the gap and setting up the jump and both Remco and MvdP thought it was too early for Pog to go so didn't bother marking him. Utter foolishness not to be on his wheel at all times and have your team about you really, should learn from Vingegaard's Tour victories. You might not be able to stay on his wheel, but you can either try or start the chase with your team immediately. I suspect that the point Pog gets marked from will have moved from 30 to 50 to 80 to 100km out now - does he have to go earlier every time to catch them sleeping?

Pog definitely looked human at points there. On about the third lap from the finish he missed a feed and was pretty pissed off, eventually they let his car come up and give him some gels. The fact that he didn't have his car with him for most of the race tells you his gap was never all that much - I don't think he would have been able to pull off an MvdP in Glasgow style corner slide out and still won, let alone a puncture.

Lack of radios really emphasise this I think, Pog was often looking behind him on the last lap, even once relatively safe, but how often was he getting time checks from the moto? And if they say "45 seconds" but are maybe a couple of minutes old and 10"-15" out? Same for the chase group - do they know how close he really is?

Anyway, I watched from over 200km out, and only thought it was definitely Pog's for about 30km of it where he had almost a minute for a while, then thought he was going to get caught for a while and didn't relax again until he was about 3-4km out. It didn't feel nailed on, it wasn't like Strade Bianche where it was all over from 80km to go and within two minutes of his original attack. There were still possibilities, Pog was tiring and the gap was small enough that a rider with diamonds in his legs might have bridged solo, or G2 might have collaborated even at 90% to bring him back. The fact the gap didn't grow shows they at least did some work together. There was also the possibility a couple of attacks and counters from the group in quick succession would have brought the time back really quickly, but there weren't really any solid counters. The terrain didn't favour the group - or teams earlier in the race though, difficult to get organised and ride a consistent pace when it's that up and down.