Strade Bianche 2026 Preview

Tadej Pogacar is back racing his bicycle after nearly five months, so I figured I should start writing (about cycling) again.

Strade Bianche is the “gravel” race of the UCI WorldTour. The race is without much debate the most prestigious one-day event on the cycling calendar aside from the World Championship and the Monuments.

The 203-kilometer parcours runs from Siena, Italy, on a few loops back to Siena (Piazza del Campo, which is one of the most beautiful Medieval town centers in Europe). There are 14 gravel sectors totaling about 64 kilometers and about 3,600 meters of elevation gain, according to ProCyclingStats.com. So this year’s route is a bit easier than it has been the last two years, which were about 10k longer with more climbing. But it is still longer than it was for most of its history (175-190km).

However, even with the slightly nerfed route, the emergence of Pogacar and other versatile climbers, and the nature of corresponding modern (read: uber-aggressive and hard) racing strategy means this is no longer a race for traditional 75-80+kg Classics men. Fabian Cancellara, who won the race three times, would finish nowhere near the top five in any edition after 2022 (probably earlier than that), and that’s not just because the general level of the peloton is higher than it was in his heyday, but because the climbers are better at Classics now.

In recent editions we’ve seen Pogacar win three of the last four, only not missing 2023 when he did not start the race and Tom Pidcock took the biggest win of his career. This is arguably the best course for Pidcock on the calendar besides possibly Amstel Gold Race (which is the only other major one-day he has also won). Pidcock finished second to Pogi last year and some would say he is the second-favorite this year. But let’s slow down on that speculation and discuss my top ten contenders, in order:

1). Tadej Pogacar

2). Isaac Del Toro

3). Paul Seixas

4). Tom Pidcock

5). Wout van Aert

6). Pello Bilbao

7). Quinn Simmons

8). Matteo Jorgenson

9). Ben Healy

10). Romain Gregoire

Honorable mentions: Matej Mohoric, Egan Bernal, Lennert Van Eetfelt

The favorites list is not my top ten-prediction, and realistically I think only the top three favorites have above 0.1 percent chance to win, barring crashes from the big boys. But assuming something crazy happens, I think this is the descending-order probability of victory for the rest of the field. Let’s discuss each contender and race dynamics before I predict the final podium.

Pogacar opens his 2026 campaign here as he often does in recent years, except for sometimes making a sponsor’s obligatory appearance at the UAE Tour a few weeks beforehand. In 2024, he started at Strade and won with an 81k solo by three minutes. Last year, he crashed in the final 50k after failing to drop Tom Pidcock with an early attack on the same sector (Monte Sante Marie) he escaped the year prior. Eventually, he did dispatch Pidcock and won pretty handily with an 18k solo, though bruised, bloodied and visibly a bit shaken. We know he usually opens his season on fire and needs no racing to warm up. In this race, he is the heaviest of heavy favorites the season will see. He is the strongest rider of all time, a master of positioning and bike handling on this dangerous course, and he has the strongest team in the race at his disposal. The only ways in which he loses Strade Bianche are if crashes out, Seixas ascends to God-Tier, or he lets his teammate, Del Toro, ride off and win. All are quite unlikely this year.

22-year-old Mexican Isaac Del Toro has every claim to the cycling throne after Pogacar ages out, gets bored and stops training hard, and/or retires from professional road racing. Rather unfortunately for Torito, however, is that there is a much younger (yes, much younger than 22) man who is leading French armies in a rebellion for the same throne. He is the third-favorite, so we’ll get to him below. Del Toro is the winner of the recent UAE Tour, which surely made his sponsor (the government of the United Arab Emirates), team manger (Mauro Gianetti) and Pogacar quite happy, because now Pogacar does not have to ride the UAE Tour next year. We know Del Toro is incredibly strong, stronger than Pogacar was at age 22. But because the sport keeps evolving, that isn’t enough to win the Tour de France anymore, as Pogacar did without much trouble at that age. Del Toro finished second in the Giro d’Italia last year and was the strongest rider for almost the entire race. He has clearly improved a lot since last May. In this year’s edition of Strade Bianche, he will be the second-strongest man in the peloton, but he will be forced to somewhat sacrifice himself to lead out Pogacar. I think he can still finish on the podium even after slightly cooking himself.

Paul Seixas is 19 years old. Paul Seixas just broke Pogacar’s record on a climb that hosted the European Championships last fall, when Pogacar was arguably in career form and pushed well over 7 watts per kilogram for 16 minutes. Paul Seixas just did the best climbing performance in February of all time (and then a 40k solo to win by almost two minutes in a one-day race). Let me repeat: Paul Seixas is 19 years old. And most relevantly to the level of pressure that will burden him for as long as he lays claim to the throne, Paul Seixas is French. Paul Seixas is The Truth. He is the Chosen One, and every other accolade the French press will assign him this year, especially when he wins the renamed Criterium du Dauphine (I refuse to write the new name) and enters the Tour de France as the great hope for the host nation… (give him a few years, at least, come on!) Anyways, we do have yet to see if he can perform in a race like Strade Bianche, but nothing would surprise me even at this very early stage of his career, not even if he showed up in Flanders in a few years when Pogacar stops participating and won it. He is that good. I think he will be able to follow Pogacar’s initial salvo in Strade, as Pidcock did last year. I just don’t think he’s quite ready to hang, for the duration of the race, with Pogi on what is essentially the Slovenian’s home turf.

The winner from three years ago,Tom Pidcock, looks strong this year, having done an all-time puncheur performance on a five-minute climb in Andalucia (8.2 w/kg estimated by Naichaca on X), where he won the final stage and finished third overall. He was also very strong in a few warm-up Spanish races before that. His recent outing in Omloop Nieuwsblad, he was nowhere near the front, finishing 48th and complaining of cold afterwards. I just think he had a bad day and the route did not suit him. Pidcock was the closest he has ever been to beating Pogacar last year in this race and ultimately finished second. He should be a force in Strade, but I believe the two younger riders have already surpassed him.

2020 Strade Bianche winner Wout van Aert is always Wout, but it’s no longer the peak Flandrien we are dealing with here. A run of crashes, fatherhood and aging have stripped him of his best legs. He can still summon a magical performance once in a while these days, as he did at the Tour and Giro last year, but even those magical days are not enough anymore to beat peak Pogacar or Del Toro (Pogi was tired on Stage 21 of last year’s Tour, and Torito is far stronger now than he was in May in Italy). I think Wout is a contender for top-five and that is completely respectable. Top-10 would even be decent on the new parcours and against these climbers.

Pello Bilbao is kind of a Strade specialist, though he’s just a pretty good rider (and one-day racer) overall. Last year he finished fifth, in 2023 seventh, and in 2022 also fifth. I think the gravel descents in Strade give him an advantage, as he is arguably the best descender in the world. He should be in the running for another top-five.

Quinn Simmons is not going to win this race, but I had to include Captain America in the list. It’s required by a recent Executive Order. As he does every winter, he’s put in a great training block. This is one of the best races for him of the entire calendar, and despite a bit of a slow start to the season in the Ardeche races in France, I have faith he can get a result here.

Next up is another American, Matteo Jorgenson, who, unlike Simmons, was quite strong in the French opening weekend, finishing fourth and second. He was the closest rider to Seixas on that historic climbing effort in the Faun-Ardeche Classic. Jorgenson is not really a winner, but he’s pretty consistent and a versatile guy. He has only ridden Strade Bianche once in his career, in 2020, before he was the Matteo Jorgenson we know. He DNFed that time. But I think this is actually a good race for his abilities and I expect a good showing.

My ninth favorite is Ben Healy, who last year finished fourth. Healy is the consummate hill classics rider who is just not strong enough to win these races in this era. He also usually sits back when the favorites really go for it, which often allows him to pick off stragglers who went too hard, too early trying to follow the galacticos. This strategy rewards him with podiums and top-fives, but not victories in these Classics. He has never won a WorldTour one-day race. He did not impress in the French opening weekend, but I think he’ll be strong in Tuscany.

Finally, I had to include another young Frenchman named Romain Gregoire, who actually won the Faun-Drome Classic, out-sprinting Jorgenson from a two-up attack. Gregoire is a talented puncheur, and if this race was easier overall with a few steep hills to finish, he’d easily be a top-five favorite (he finished top-five in the two punchiest Tour de France stages of the first week last year). But Strade in the age of Pogacar and UAE dominance is an epic slugfest that is Biblicaly hard, more or less from the gun. I do not think this is the ideal race for Gregoire, but he has a lot of potential here in the coming years if he can improve his endurance and general climbing ability.

Mohoric, Bernal, and Van Eetfelt have showed strength in their varying appearances so far this spring. I simply could not include Bernal (who has podiumed this race) in the top 10 after Seixas ruined him by 2:34 in Ardeche (Bernal finished seventh there before skipping the Drome Classic the following day). Mohoric has the descending skills to recuperate lost time on steep climbs and demonstrated surprising form in Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, but this race is too hard for him to really compete for the win. Van Eetfelt is a climber and finished third on the hardest stage of the UAE Tour, so he’s in shape, but like Gregoire, I’m not confident he has the endurance yet for Strade. His biggest career wins came in Asia on unipuerto stages. A top-ten would be solid for all of these guys.

Race Dynamics/Tactics

UAE will control the race with Florian Vermeersch, Domen Novak, Kevin Vermaerke, and Felix Grosschartner. The early breakaway will likely be relatively strong but will have no chance for the win. Jan Christen and Del Toro will be saved for as long as possible, and I expect Pogacar to wait a little longer this year for his attack. Colle Pinzuto is the sector where (on the second ascent) he shook off Pidcock last year. It is also the sector the organizers are going to name after him before the race. Its first passage comes about 50k from the finish.

With the objective of going 1-2 with Del Toro, Pogacar will attack there and go solo despite Paul Seixas initially following. I think Pogacar shreds him off the wheel with a grinding 45-60second attack, like Del Toro used (twice) in the UAE Tour to drop Antonio Tiberi.

Torito will sit on the group behind as Pogacar builds his lead, and eventually solo to second, and Seixas will drop Pidcock on the final hill before entering Siena. I expect gaps as big or bigger than last year (10th place was over five minutes back and the entire top ten arrived solo).

Final Podium Prediction (as revealed above):

1). Tadej Pogacar

2). Isaac Del Toro

3). Paul Seixas

Cycling is back and I couldn’t be more excited.

Jamie