ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH
Few riders can claim to be the truly dominant rider of a year. Of course, there is always someone with the most wins, and it’s common to end the year with a best sprinter, a best stage racer and a best classics rider, but it is rare for one rider to be the definitive best of a season. In 2021 Tadej Pogacar was clearly that, with his wins at the Tour de France, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Il Lombardia; in 1972 Eddy Merckx won more than most top riders win in their entire career, but 11 years ago it was another Belgian rider in Philippe Gilbert. In one season, he won 17 races, including the Ardennes double of Liège and Flèche Wallonne plus the Amstel Gold Race; also San Sebastián, and a spell in yellow at the Tour.
A decade on, when Gilbert is asked what being the undisputed best rider in the world is like, he explains: “It’s hard to say. You start the season, you win a race, then a few days later a second one, then another. You go from race to race, and I was resetting every time. I wasn’t thinking I had won 10. I was just resting and focusing on the next race.”
He is sanguine about his standout, record year: “I am really happy I enjoyed those moments, and I was always aware of what I was doing. I was working hard, I sacrificed a lot. For that year, I was almost never home, I was always training and doing recons. There was a lot of work behind it. I realised I didn’t do it for nothing, because that year was one of the best years ever in cycling.”
In the moment it
