Tadej Pogačar's Milan-San Remo victory was already extraordinary for a number of reasons but it now looks even more so, with information emerging that he rode to victory on a damaged bike.
According to the UAE Team Emirates-XRG mechanic Boštjan Kavčnik, who spoke to Slovenian newspaper Delo, Pogačar didn't just rip his skinsuit in the dramatic crash ahead of the Cipressa, he also cracked his frame.
"The rear fork was damaged, but fortunately it didn't come loose," Kavčnik is quoted as saying.
We've run his quotes through Google Translate, but we assume he's referring to the rear triangle, namely the seat stay or chain stay, or where they meet at the dropout, on the left-hand side of the bike - the side he fell onto in his crash - although it's not clear exactly which part of the frame was broken. Cyclingnews has reached out to the team for clarity.
It was clearly not a catastrophic failure, but Kavčnik hinted that Pogačar was lucky it held up.
"If Tadej had known what condition the bike was in, he wouldn't have been descending so uncompromisingly that even Tom Pidcock had a hard time following him."
What's more, there was also the suggestion that the bike was slowing him down. "His frame broke in the fall, and the disc rubbed against the brake surface," Kavčnik added.
This would make Pogačar's record time on the Cipressa, which was already astonishing given he had to chase back through the bunch, often taking the long way round corners, even more other-worldly. Likewise, to drop Mathieu van der Poel on the Poggio and beat Tom Pidcock in a sprint on a cracked frame and losing precious watts to disc brake rub would elevate his performance even higher.
Another factor is that Pogačar apparently had to reset his gears after his Shimano Di2 rear derailleur went into crash mode, effectively locking him in gear. After a spin to check the rear wheel was moving freely, Pogačar could be seen labouring in a heavy gear as he got going again, and would have needed to hold down the button on his Di2 junction box somewhere in his cockpit while on the move in order to unlock his rear derailleur again.
"Tadej crashed onto the left side [of the bike], which has no gearshift, but the crash mode was still activated in the event of a fall. Tadej put it back into gear himself, he didn't feel anything else was wrong, so we didn't change the bike," Kavčnik said.
Pogačar only had one derailleur, as he opted for a 1x set-up in a bid to shave off a few grams and grab marginal aerodynamic gain. He also bucked the trend of wider tyres and narrowed his 30mm tyres from last year's race to a 28mm pair.
"This bike is now going into Tadej's special collection, even though it's damaged," said Kavčnik.
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