The 2024 men’s cycling season was full of drama, excitement – and a whole lot of Tadej Pogačar victories.
From the three Grand Tours to the five Monuments, it was a memorable season of unforgettable long-distance attacks and historic storylines.
Here are Cycling Weekly’s favourite six moments of 2024 from men’s racing.
Final day drama at Paris-Nice
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The first major stage race of the season, Paris-Nice throws crosswinds, fog, rain, snow and eventually, as they near the French Riviera, sun at riders. It also throws up unpredictable, topsy-turvy and nail biting racing. 2024 was no different.
Four different riders led the race in the first six days, and surprisingly none of them were the two pre-race favourites: Primož Roglič and Remco Evenepoel. Ahead of the final day in Nice, a rollercoaster stage in the Maritime Alps, American Brandon McNulty led his compatriot Matteo Jorgenson by four seconds, with Mattias Skjelmose 35 seconds in arrears.
What was billed as the battle of the Americans was complicated by the fact that you can never write off Evenepoel. The Belgian won the stage, lifting himself into second overall, but Jorgensen clung to his wheel to take the yellow off a beaten and dejected McNulty. It was the biggest victory of the Visma-Lease a Bike rider’s young career.
Van der Poel’s crushing Roubaix victory
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No one can be expected to win Paris-Roubaix – there’s just too many uneven cobbles, hidden and visible dangers, and a big little thing called bad luck that have to be surmounted before a rider even gets within sight of the Roubaix velodrome.
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But in April, Mathieu van der Poel made the Hell of the North look as easy as a riding along a Belgian canal path is, defending his title in devastating style: attacking 59.6km from the finish – the second-longest victory solo in the race’s storied history – and winning by three minutes, the biggest victory margin in 22 years.
Resplendent in his world champion stripes, it was his sixth Monument victory, and a reminder to all that the Alpecin-Deceuninck Dutchman is truly the outstanding Classics rider of the 2020s.
Cobbles chaos at the Tour de France
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A third French victory in nine days – the home nation’s greatest opening week of the Tour de France in many a year – was only one part of what was an epic day’s racing on the cobbles of Troyes.
The first full cobbled stage in the history of the Tour, with no less than 32km of 14 different white roads, expectedly caused havoc: attacks were relentless, Tadej Pogačar and Remco Evenepoel repeatedly launched moves, Jonas Vingegaard somehow hung on, but Primož Roglič struggled and languished. Riders fell off, bikes were changed, dust kicked up, and sharp words were exchanged. “Vicious,” said one rider. Another said: “Brutal.”
In the end, miraculously, it was a GC stalemate as up ahead Anthony Turgis beat Tom Pidcock in a sprint, but the ceaseless action left everyone catching their breath and demanding more cobbled stages in the future. Top level entertainment.
Remco’s Olympic double
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Just a few days after winning gold in the time trial event, Remco Evenepoel secured a historic Olympic double with a performance stacked full of panache, steeliness and lung-busting efforts.
After first beating compatriot Wout van Aert to the title as Belgium’s best bet, Evenepoel attacked with 38km to go, caught the chase group, and then distanced eventual silver medallist Valentin Madouas with 15km to go.
All was going well, Specialized were designing his golden bike, but then a rear wheel puncture threatened to derail him. Angry shouts and an impatient stomp in the end weren’t necessary; he stopped on the finish line, dismounted his bike, spread his arms out wide, slammed down an imaginary phone and posed in front of the Eiffel Tower. History made. Hang the image in the Louvre.
Daring O’Connor steals Vuelta red
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Stage six of the Vuelta a España did it again. A year on from when Sepp Kuss won at Javalambre and catapulted himself towards the top of the GC that he’d eventually win, in 2024 it was the turn of Ben O’Connor.
Thirty-third overnight, 1:56 behind Primož Roglič in the race for red, O’Connor infiltrated a large break on the road to Yunquera in the heat of Andalucía. Roglič and Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe were nonplussed by O’Connor’s GC talents, despite him having finished fourth in May’s Giro d’Italia, and they refused to chase even when the Australian went solo with 27km to go.
Remarkably, the Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale rider won the stage by 4:33, and jumped into the red jersey with a margin of 4:51. The entire dynamic of the rest of the race was fundamentally and permanently altered, and Roglič would only snatch red off O’Connor’s shoulders on stage 19. O’Connor never fancied himself to win the maillot rojo, but did hold on for second.
Pogačar’s Triple Crown
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How do you stop an unstoppable force? You can’t. Certainly not when the subject is Tadej Pogačar and the year is 2024.
After winning six stages and the GC at both the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France, Pogačar had one big goal left on his list for the season: to win the World Championships. Everyone knew he’d attack on the mountainous loop around Zurich in Switzerland, and most predicted he’d inevitably and undoubtedly cruise to victory, but no one actually guessed when.
One hundred kilometres to go was when the impatient Slovenian decided to rip things apart, and with 52km remaining he was already alone, out in front, charging towards the first Triple Crown since Stephen Roche in 1987. Unbeatable, imperious, remarkable. The most deserving world champion.
