Pogacar wins Strade Bianche for record fourth time

Four-time Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar soloed to victory as he won Strade Bianche for a record fourth time.

The reigning world champion attacked with 78km of the 204km race to go and cruised to a third straight victory in the Italian one-day classic.

Sporting dyed blonde hair for his first race day of 2026, the 27-year-old Slovenian won his opening race of the season for a sixth straight year.

Pogacar crossed the line exactly one minute before 19-year-old French rider Paul Seixas, while Pogacar's UAE Emirates-XRG team-mate Isaac del Toro was third.

Earlier, Swiss champion Elise Chabbey won the women's race for the first time following a thrilling finish.

Strade Bianche starts and ends in Siena and features uneven gravel on Tuscany's famous white, chalky roads, including the Monte Sante Marie section.

Pogacar made his decisive move there, just as he did two years ago, and when Seixas attacked about 18km from the finish, only Del Toro went with him, refusing to help the young French star chase down his team-mate.

Jan Christen finished just ahead of Britain's Tom Pidcock to ensure there were three UAE riders in the top six.

"I'm super happy," said Pogacar. "I was chasing really hard on the steepest part of the climb on Sante Marie.

"But I said to myself, 'I will go all out to the top and then see if [Seixas] can bridge or he will make a gap'. In the end I saw that it's enough, and I knew that Isaac and Jan [were there] also, so this helped a lot."

In the 133km women's race, seven riders arrived together at the Via Santa Catarina, the final climb up to the Piazza del Campo finish, and they were soon whittled down to four.

Elisa Longo Borghini led most of the way up the climb but went into the penultimate corner shoulder-to-shoulder with Franziska Koch and Katarzyna Niewiadoma, before 32-year-old Chabbey darted down the inside to claim victory ahead of Niewiadoma, with Koch finishing third.

Pidcock claimed one of the biggest wins of his career in the 2023 edition but his seventh place meant the Pinarello-Q36.5 rider finished outside the top five for the first time in his sixth appearance in the Strade Bianche.

"I think you can feel the sombreness here, with Visma–Lease a Bike as well," said the 26-year-old. "With UAE like that, there's not much you can do.

"My chain fell off twice on Sante Marie, that really killed my momentum, but I wouldn't have been with Tadej anyway.
I don't think it changed the race much, apart from taking a bit more out of me.

"It's so difficult then, when you're in the group behind and you know the race is gone. It was not really that fun, to he honest."

Another one-day classic follows next week with Milan-San Remo, one of only two of the five Monument races that Pogacar is yet to win.

"It's a great start to the season," he added. "We'll go day by day, race by race, and see how it goes [from here]."