So the day is finally upon us.
Its a rare occurence that one's favourite riders are the three biggest candidates for the gold medal, Pogačar, Remco and Van der Poel. If anyone else rather than these three wins, it will have to be on a great day and will be a deserved winner.
Just like the odds say, Pogačar has to be the favourite, he has been doing a legendary season winning almost every race he starts but Slovenia is not UAE so he might need to expose himself earlier which could cost him in the end. Roglič could play the key Yates/Majka but I will understand if he decides to save himself a bit even though I don't think the race suits him that well.
Remco is at least to me clearly the second favourite, he is the Olympic champion and was already World Champion. However unlike in those two wins he won't have Van Aert by his side and if it is a straight up battle against Pogačar he will have a high chance of ending up with silver rather than gold. His biggest hope is that the race becomes more tactical and I think that is exactly wht could happen.
Finally the defending champion Van der Poel. This course is likely on the limit of what he can be competitive on but looking at the results of the other categories there is hope for him. Ultimately I still think he won't be good enough for gold but a similar scenario like Liège could play out with him coming back to take a medal on group 2.
Then we have the outsiders. While I think the win should be between Pogačar and Remco there the chance that someone antecipates in a group and is strong enough to hold on or has the best day of his career and manage to follow Pogačar and Remco to take gold. The biggest candidates for this are home favourite Hirschi, Jorgenson, Pedersen, Pidcock, Van Gils and two time World Champion, Alaphilippe.
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