The 'Big Six' risk making it dull

After Pogačar and Van der Poel dominated the spring and Remco strolled to Liège glory, are things about to get even more predictable when it comes to the Grand Tours, asks Felix Lowe?

The pool of talent battling it out for victories in cycling's major races is so strong yet so shallow that the opportunities for outsiders are getting fewer and farther between.

Entering the Giro d'Italia, and discounting the Tour de Romandie at the end of April, a staggering 12 of the 19 World Tour events this season have been won by the same six riders: Tadej Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard, Primoz Roglič, Remco Evenepoel, Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel.

Take the final two Classics specialists out of the equation and focus on the last four stage races, and almost 50 per cent of stages from Paris-Nice, Tirreno-Adriatico, Catalunya and Itzulia combined have been won by those first four GC superstars who, between them, have gobbled up two-thirds of all the Grand Tours since 2020.

That’s the negative way of looking at it. You could say – as I indeed argued last month – that the volume and calibre of these absorbing rivalries is unlike anything we have seen before; that, as fans, we are being spoiled rotten, race after race, by the blow-by-blow battles between the socalled ‘Big Six’. Which makes it so frustrating when, say, Van Aert picks up a puncture at the key moment of Paris-Roubaix, gifting a cobblestone trophy to Van der Poel because there’s nobody left to bring the flying Dutchman back down to earth.