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A special day for UAE Team Emirates saw a double victory at Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico through Brandon McNulty and Tadej Pogacar respectively.
Tadej Pogacar claimed his fifth, and the team’s 15th victory of the season, with a crushing punch on the uphill finish on Stage 4 of Tirreno-Adriatico.
The Slovenian, who powered to victory last week after a resounding 50km solo attack on Strade Bianche, followed up the win with a commanding stage win riding from Cascata delle Marmore to Bellante (202km).
The Tour de France Champion went on the attack for the second day in a row taking Remco Evenepoel (Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl Team), Filippo Ganna and Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe) with him. The break, however, did not succeed, as they were caught by the bunch with just over 30kms to go.
The stage was decided in the final circuit of Bellante, with the ascent of 4km at 7% which the peloton did three times.
Attacks and counter attacks were well managed by Pogacar and his teammates, with the Slovenian timing his last attack perfectly with 500m to go as he accelerated in emphatic fashion up the final ascent and crossed the finish line two seconds clear of his rivals.
Pogacar said, “After the great work by the whole team, today I could only try to win and give my best. We worked perfectly and everything went as we hoped. There are still three important stages in where we need to work hard, both tomorrow and especially in the one after which will be the queen stage. We have to stay focused and give our best.”
Gruelling day
Earlier in the day, Brandon McNulty was the protagonist of the fifth stage of Paris-Nice, a gruelling 188.8km day that took the riders from Saint-Just-Saint-Rambert to Saint-Sauveur-de-Montagut.
The American emulated Pogacar’s Strade Bianche performance from last week by launching a 38km solo attack of his own taking home the victory on stage five of Paris-Nice.
The victory is the 23-year-old’s third of the season but first on the WorldTour after already conquering the Faun-Ardeche Classic on the same road last month.
McNulty said, “I am very happy with my first victory in a World Tour race, especially for how the week started amidst bad luck and various problems. Today everything went according to plan, I got into the breakaway and had good sensations throughout the stage. Arriving at the penultimate climb, the team gave me the green light if I was feeling good and I decided to attack. This is a victory that definitely gives me morale to keep giving my best and aim to do even better.”