Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? With 23 titles in one rhapsodic year, the Slovenian has made an art of winning

He’s going. And for the first few seconds after Tadej Pogacar launches the solo attack that will win him the world championship, nobody can quite believe it. He’s going. “Suicide move,” Remco Evenepoel mutters to Mathieu van der Poel alongside him. “I didn’t even know he’d gone, to be honest,” Britain’s Oscar Onley would later recall. “Everyone’s thinking it’s too much,” said Ireland’s Ben Healy. There are more than 100km remaining in Zurich and the rational consensus in the peloton is that the world’s greatest cyclist has just blown his chance at the rainbow jersey.

He’s gone. And for all the puzzled faces he leaves in his wake, the shock and disbelief that will materialise when he rolls over the finish line in first place several hours later, perhaps the first thing to say about Pogacar’s gamechanging move was that it wasn’t quite planned, but it wasn’t quite unplanned either. For one thing, he had been corralling his remaining Slovenian teammates on the front for some time. Afterwards, his UAE Team Emirates colleague Tim Wellens revealed that the pair were recently on a training ride in Monaco where Pogacar confided his intention to attack early. “I thought he was joking,” Wellens admitted.