Tadej Pogačar could hardly have made shorter shrift of the opposition this year at the Volta a Catalunya as the two-times Tour de France champion blasted his way through atrocious weather conditions en route to the race's first summit finish of Vallter 2000 to claim both the stage win and the overall lead.
Early in the stage Pogačar and his UAE Team Emirates teammate Domen Novak had played a practical joke on the bunch by hiding in some convenient bushes after an early attack, but when it came to the final climb of the day, the Slovenian was clearly in deadly earnest.
Seemingly undeterred by the freezing rain, sleet, fog and temperatures plummetting towards zero on the final Pyrenean climb of the day, Pogačar lived up to his status as the overwhelming pre-race favourite with an attack some 7km from the summit.
On Monday at San Feliu de Guixols, the Slovenian just missed out on the stage victory when he waited a fraction too long to chase down Nick Schultz (Israel-Premier Tech). But this time there was no such hesitation and by the summit, Pogačar's advantage had yawned open to 1:25 on his closest chaser Mikel Landa (Soudal-QuickStep).
Pogačar was cautious about his chances of overall victory – and with five stages remaining, as well as losing a valuable climbing teammate Jay Vine to sickness, there is still plenty of time for more battles. But after just two days of racing, it's safe to say the 2024 Volta a Catalunya is already his to lose.
"In the first part of the race, Israel helped a little bit but it was more or less everything on us to control the race," Pogačar said in the post-race press conference. "And then in the final Pavel [Sivakov], Marc [Soler] and João [Almeida] did an amazing job on the climb."
"João was telling me at the start he didn't feel so good, but when he pulled he destroyed all the field and at one moment I was thinking he was so good that he could go with me."
"We had a little bit of a gap already, but he told me to try to go solo to the finish. I knew it'd be a long way to the top but I had great support on the radio too and I gave it all to the top because I was thinking that here, maybe," – he joked and gestured at the sides of the cold tent, with no heating whatsoever, where the press conference took place – "they would do a press conference in a warm room."
Press conferences apart, Pogačar's victory is his second major triumph in 2024 after his epic long-distance breakaway at Strade Bianche.
But if his 81km move on the sterrato of Tuscany was proof of his ability to grind out a powerful pace on the rugged off-road, here the Slovenian provided a powerful reminder of his pure climbing ability: with the Giro d'Italia less than six weeks away, his performance that carries even greater resonance.
Pogačar also looked at one point to be going on the attack in the first hour of the stage when he and teammate Domen Novak made a seemingly bizarre two-up move 165km out. But this was more due to Israel-Premier Tech failing to set a tempo, he claimed, even though they were race leaders. But that enabled him to play a practical joke on the bunch.
"Nobody wanted to pull, so we came from behind, me and Domen, and we'd like to pull but nobody held our wheel," he said. "So we had a little bit of a gap – 100 metres, 200 metres – so we stopped for a pee and hid in the bushes so the peloton didn't know where we were so it was just a little bit of fun."
As for the conditions, which were no joke at all on the Vallter ascent, Pogačar described them as "not that bad until the last climb. I was not expecting to be so cold in the final 3km but even if we went full gas the gaps were getting colder and colder."
Despite gaining a margin of 1:24 on closest chaser Mikel Landa on the same climb where last year 19 riders finished within a 90-second timespan, Pogačar commented modestly the race isn't yet over.
"That's quite a big gap, but the race is not over yet," he said. "Today I had a really good day, but we can see in the next days how it will develop."
As for stage 3, another Pyrenean stage beckons, and Pogačar refused to reveal his strategy, pointing out that "today Domen did a lot of work and Felix [Großschartner]. It depends a bit on them.
"We'll see how the stage goes, I don't want them to suffer so much," he concluded. But come what may, as climbing performances go, Pogačar's ride on stage 2 of the Volta a Catalunya will surely take much longer than 24 hours to be forgotten.
