Tadej Pogačar overcomes crash to win the legendary Milano-Sanremo

Triumphing in the most remarkable of circumstances, Tadej Pogačar produced perhaps the performance of his career to win Milano-Sanremo on Saturday afternoon. In doing so, the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider becomes the only active rider to have won four out of cycling’s five Monument Classics.

Such a feat only serves to underline the magnitude of Pogačar’s accomplishment, with the Slovenian quickly mobbed by teammates, friends and even his opponents after the finish line, all of whom were desperate to offer up their plaudits.

In winning a race that has long since been dubbed the impossible dream for a rider in Pogačar’s ilk, the world champion claimed victory against all the odds and took himself to 110 career wins.

To make the victory all the more impressive, Pogačar actually suffered a crash just 6km before the all-important Cipressa. With rips to his skinsuit and abrasions to his left-hand side, the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider bounced back to his feet and was helped back to the peloton by the faultless work of his teammates.

Once back at the front, Pogačar delivered a record-breaking ascent of both the Cipressa and Poggio climbs, eventually whittling his competition down to only Tom Pidcock (Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling) over the top of the final ascent. With the British rider in his wheel, Pogačar dived down towards the finishing straight in Sanremo.

There, on the Via Roma, the Slovenian out-sprinted Pidcock and picked up the Milano-Sanremo crown for the first time in UAE Team Emirates-XRG history. For the magnitude of victory, it is a race that will stand alongside the team’s first wins in the Tour de France and the Tour of Flanders. It is a victory that will be written about for generations to come.

Speaking after the finish, Pogačar had tears in his eyes as he reflected on what he had just achieved in the race known as La Classicissima.

Pogačar: “When I crashed, for a second I thought it was all over. Because to crash just before the most important part of the race is not ideal, but luckily I was quickly back on the bike and not too much damage to me or the bike.

“I saw my team. Florian and Felix, they left everything out there to bring me back to the front. They gave me back hope, and the legs were still ok. Brandon and Isaac did the rest on the Cipressa. Today, if there is no team, probably I would just go straight to Sanremo [and the finish line], I would not go right onto the Cipressa.

“When we were doing turns on the front, I was really happy that everybody worked, but it was a bit of headwind. It was not the ideal circumstances [for a small group] like last year, and it was a bit harder in the middle part. For the Poggio, the wind was better this year, so I tried to go all-out there.

“The idea was to go alone but Tom Pidcock was really strong, and also chapeau to Mathieu – he did an amazing race also. In the end, me and Tom came together and I was lucky in the sprint. Tom is a really fast guy, we all know this. He is punchy, he is fast, and he looks really in shape. So I was a bit afraid when he let me go first [in the sprint], and I was waiting as long as I could. In the end, it was really close, so chapeau to him.”

It was a victory that could not have been achieved without the help of Pogačar’s teammates, who stepped up at every possible moment. After a crash ruled Jan Christen out of the race earlier in the day, Domen Novak was the first to put his nose to the wind and pace the peloton, before Florian Vermeersch was handed the reins.

Thanks to both Novak and Vermeersch, Pogačar looked perfectly set to ride onto the Cipressa climb in front and launch a fierce attack, just as he had done in 2025. However, the crash appeared to bring those plans to a grinding halt.

The world champion was left in a heap on the asphalt, as the peloton whooshed past him on either side and continued its relentless assault towards the Cipressa. With only 6km to the foot of the climb, it could have been panic stations for Pogačar and his UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammates.

But instead, Pogačar quickly bounced to his feet and had the immediate help of his colleagues, Florian Vermeersch and Felix Großschartner. Together, the pair closed a 35-second gap that had opened up to the peloton, and poetically, Pogačar regained contact with the back of the pack at the very foot of the penultimate climb.

From here, Brandon McNulty took over as Pogačar’s de facto lead-out man, not only guiding the Slovenian up the side to the very front of the peloton, but then proceeding to deliver a huge turn at the head of the race. It was a performance that deserved all the plaudits in the world, such was the American’s importance to Pogačar’s eventual win.

With McNulty having strung out the peloton, all that was left on the Cipressa was for Isaac del Toro to deliver a ferocious turn of pace, with Pogačar in the wheel. Once the Mexican had created the conditions for attack, the world champion burst around the outside and accelerated off the front of the group. It was an attack right from the 2025 playbook, and saw only two riders stick to his wheel.

Those two riders were Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech) and Tom Pidcock (Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling), with the trio then turning collaborators on the descent of the Cipressa and into the base of the Poggio. Onto the final climb, they took a slender nine-second advantage over those chasing behind, but it was a gap that would prove definitive.

Van der Poel, a winner of this race in both 2023 and 2025, was perhaps the biggest danger to Pogačar’s designs on the trophy, so the Slovenian delivered a series of accelerations that shook the Dutchman loose halfway up the climb. From here to the finish, barely an inch could separate Pogačar from Pidcock, as the duo rode to the finish line on the Via Roma.

In Sanremo, it was Pogačar that triumphed in the two-up sprint, with a winning margin of just 4cm across the line. It was a finish befitting of perhaps the most memorable Milano-Sanremo in decades, and one that saw Pogačar elevate himself only higher into the pantheon of greats.

With wins in four out of cycling’s five Monuments – Milano-Sanremo, the Tour of Flanders, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Il Lombardia – only Paris-Roubaix remains yet to be added to Pogačar’s palmarès. If Milano-Sanremo appeared to be the impossible dream just minutes before the start of the Cipressa on Saturday afternoon, who is to say that Paris-Roubaix could not one day be vanquished?

For Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates-XRG, there is time first to celebrate the accomplishment of winning the 117th edition of Milano-Sanremo.

Milano-Sanremo 2026 results

1. Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) 6:35:49

2. Tom Pidcock (Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling) s.t

3. Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) +4″