The normal rules don’t apply to Tadej Pogačar. That was already abundantly clear before this Giro d’Italia and it was only reiterated by his first day in the maglia rosa on the road to Fossano on stage 3, where he tried to upset the sprinters with a late attack in the company of Geraint Thomas.
The long run from Novara lent itself to a bunch sprint and, under normal circumstances, a cessation of hostilities among the general classification contenders. We should know by now, of course, that there is no such thing as a détente in the Pogačar era. The race is always on, and it’s always on his terms. Pogačar, it seems, never operates on battery-saving mode.
