BEN HEALY finished seventh at the World Championships in Zurich today.
The Irish cyclist produced an impressive performance and for a long spell looked set for a top-three finish.
Meanwhile, Tadej Pogacar added the world road race title to his Tour de France and Giro d’Italia victories on Sunday to become the first man since 1987 to win cycling’s triple crown in the same season.
The 26-year-old Slovenian won the 273km race around Zurich in a time of 6hr 27min 30sec, with Australia’s Ben O’Connor at 34sec and Dutch one-day specialist Mathieu van der Poel in third at 58sec.
Pogacar wrote himself into the history books with an unorthodox long-range attack, rarely seen at this level, to join Ireland’s Stephen Roche from 1987 and Belgian Eddy Merckx from 1974 as a men’s triple crown champion.
Annemiek van Vleuten achieved the women’s triple in 2022.
Pogacar attacked with a sudden and unanswered acceleration 100km out, with Slovenian team-mate Jan Tratnik dropping back from an escape group to pace him to the head of the race — a position he would never relinquish.
With 70km to go, Healy was one of three riders to successfully break away along with Oscar Onley of Great Britain and Latvia’s Toms Skujins.
And it wasn’t long before Skujins and Healy were on their own, trying to gain on Pogacar.
As the race approached its climax, in the final lap, Healy and Skujins were one minute behind Pogačar, and almost half a minute ahead of the second chasing group that featured Remco Evenepoel and reigning World Champion Mathieu van der Poel.
There was a moment with under 24km to go that Healy dropped back from Skujins, but he quickly rejoined him.
As the race neared the final 20km Healy and Skujins started to reduce the gap to Pogačar, but Swiss rider Marc Hirschi caught up with Healy and Skujins.
Hirschi and Enric Mas of Spain worked together to try to close in on Healy and Skujins.
With 16km to the finish line, the chasing group consisted of seven riders, including Healy, who ultimately had to settle for seventh.
“It looked like a stupid attack but I came here for the victory and luckily I made it, I never gave up,” Pogacar said.
“All these years I’ve been targeting the Tour de France, and not the world title, which I’ve never won before, but this year all fell into place.”
Any race with Pogacar, Van der Poel and double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel could be expected to be hotly contested and this proved to be the case.
Evenepoel’s entire Belgian team had built up a head of steam at the front of the peloton to keep the Tour-Giro champion within touching distance for two tense hours.
Evenepoel was frequently frustrated, waving his arms at other riders to take up some of the work foisted upon him in the chase.
Pavel Sivakov, a Pogacar team-mate at UAE, rode out ahead with the winner for around 40km before the maverick triple Tour de France winner put the hammer down and went for it alone.
Pogacar skipped the Olympics to target the triple crown, which he sealed with this win over a 273km course that suited him with its short punchy climbs and kicks at 12 percent.
The 2020 and 2021 world champion Julian Alaphilippe fell and dislocated his shoulder after an hour, while other fancied riders in Spain’s Mikel Landa and Denmark’s Mattias Skjelmose dropped out.
The race set off at 11 in the morning (local time) from the widely pedestrianised town of Winterthur and included seven laps around Zurich, with a challenging 4,470 metres of elevation that was expected to favour the more slender riders.
Healy was not the only Irish competitor in action.
Eddie Dunbar, Conn McDunphy and Archie Ryan were also competing.
Archie Ryan finished in 21st place, while Dunbar was 67th and McDunphy was among the 114 riders who did not finish.
Additional reporting by Paul Fennessy
