After a humbling defeat in the men’s elite time trial last Sunday, Tadej Pogačar bounced back to take a stunning solo victory in the road race at the UCI Road World Championships yesterday.
The Slovenian star blew the race to pieces with more than 100km to go, with a searing attack on Mont Kigali.
After dispatching the only two riders who could follow him – his UAE Team Emirates XRG teammates, Juan Ayuso and Isaac del Toro – soon afterwards, Pogačar soloed to victory to secure his second rainbow jersey.
As at this year’s Tour de France, Pogačar opted for Colnago’s Y1Rs aero road bike – specifically a raw carbon version designed to be as light as possible.
Let’s dig into the bike’s spec, and what changes Pogačar made for the roads of Kigali.
Chasing rainbows
According to Colnago, the Y1Rs was the fastest bike on the market when it launched late last year.
Designed to take full advantage of the latest UCI regulations, it’s said to be up to 20 watts more efficient than the Italian brand’s old V4Rs all-rounder (which Pogačar had been using up to that point).
As with many modern aero road bikes, the Y1Rs features a full complement of deep, truncated aerofoil tube shapes.
The Colnago distinguishes itself with a radically offset seat tube design, plus a hinge fork reminiscent of time trial bikes.
Up front, there’s also an eye-catching one-piece carbon cockpit, with a V-shaped stem and gull-wing handlebars.
This machine, with its raw carbon finish, is clearly designed to get the bike’s weight down to a minimum.
The world champion debuted this weight-weenie Y1Rs build at this year’s Tour, for the mountain time trial to Peyragudes on stage 13.
We later found out it weighed just over 7kg – making it around half a kilo lighter than Pogačar's world champion themed Y1Rs, which we weighed at the Grand Départ in Lille.
That would have been a welcome saving, considering the course featured a whopping 5,475m of climbing across its mammoth 267.5km distance.
Pog switches to Archetypes
Although the pictures we received from Colnago show a bike set up with Continental’s GP5000 TT TR time trial tyres, pictures from the race itself show Pogačar opted for the German brand’s new Archetype tyres on the day.
This marks a change from the Tour, where the Slovenian opted for the narrower, 28c TT TR tyres for the majority of the race.
In contrast, the Archetype tyres are slightly wider – only coming in a 30c width. If we had to guess, we suspect this choice may have had something to do with the cobbled climbs that littered the course.
Pogačar ran these on a set of ENVE’s latest SES 4.5 Pro wheels, with custom decals.
The rest of the build was as we’ve come to expect of the world champion’s bike. It featured a Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 R9200 groupset (there was no sign of any new R9300 parts, sadly), with CarbonTi chainrings, plus a custom 3D-printed Fizik saddle and Elite’s featherweight Leggero Carbon bottle cages.
Specs | Tadej Pogačar's Colnago Y1Rs for the 2025 UCI World Championships road race
- Frameset: Colnago Y1Rs
- Groupset: Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 R9200
- Wheelset: ENVE SES 4.5 Pro
- Power meter: Shimano Dura-Ace FC-R9200-P
- Tyres: Continental Archetype, 700x30c
- Handlebar: Colnago Y1Rs
- Seatpost: Colnago Y1Rs
- Saddle: Fizik One-to-One, 3D-printed
- Bottle cages: Elite Leggero Carbon
- Pedals: Shimano Dura-Ace
- Weight: Unknown
