How Seixas dropped everyone on the Civiglio, minute by minute

Como, 16:29. Il Lombardia passes under the finish banner for the first time and the six from the morning break are still out front: Sylvain Moniquet, Michael Leonard, Julien Bernard, George Bennett, Louis Vervaeke and Ben O’Connor. Behind them, some twenty-five riders, with Giulio Pellizzari pulling for Remco Evenepoel. Then comes the Civiglio: 4.2 kilometres at 9.7%, the top 16.7 kilometres from the finish. Where Il Lombardia was decided we measured in the analysis of the numbers; how it ended is in the news story. This is the how.

The UAE train

At the foot of the climb the break still has 43″⁰¹, and UAE take over at the front of the group: Adam Yates, then Brandon McNulty and Isaac Del Toro. On Del Toro’s wheel sits Paul Seixas, then Evenepoel and Giulio Ciccone. Pellizzari, who has done the work so far, is dropped at 16:33. Further up, Leonard and Moniquet try to leave their breakaway companions, but their lead melts away bend after bend. The favourites are all in the first ten wheels, and nobody moves.

Not an attack

At 16:35 Seixas goes. It is not an attack: it is a progression, a pace that rises and never comes down again. On his wheel are McNulty, Del Toro, Tom Pidcock, Ciccone and Enric Mas; Evenepoel is starting to suffer. A minute later the group swallows Leonard and Moniquet, and the break that had been out front for more than four hours is over.

From there Seixas does nothing new, and that is exactly the others’ problem: the pace stays where it is, and whoever cannot hold it goes. Evenepoel first. Then Del Toro and McNulty, the two who were setting the pace for him a minute earlier. At 16:38 only Pidcock and Ciccone are left on his wheel, with Mas a few metres behind. Pidcock cracks. Ciccone holds on until 1,300 metres from the top, where he is already 9 seconds down, and he never gets them back: at 16:40 Seixas is alone. Since the first change of pace, 3′–3′36″⁰² have gone by. After the finish he put it like this: from the attack on, “it was like an individual time trial all the way to the finish”.

The top, and after

Behind, the race falls apart. Del Toro is in crisis; Evenepoel finds himself in a small group with McNulty, Jarno Widar, Oscar Onley and Ben Healy. Mas gets back to Ciccone, 24 seconds behind the leader; Pidcock and Filippo Zana are at 40. At the top Seixas has 30 seconds on Ciccone and Mas: 21 of them taken in the last 1,300 metres alone. Zana and Pidcock cross at 46″, Evenepoel’s group, with Michael Storer, at 1′10″.

On the descent Ciccone and Mas claw back a few seconds; the sums are in the analysis. Then comes San Fermo della Battaglia for the second time, and there Seixas is the fastest of all again: 6′17″⁰³. Mas, who shakes off Ciccone on the climb, takes 14 seconds longer. In Como Mas finishes 48″ back, Ciccone 1′05″, Evenepoel 1′20″. The times on the other climbs, with watts per kilo and the wind at the top, are on the race page.

Sources

• RCS Sport, Il Lombardia 2026 live: times, gaps and the San Fermo timings.
• The Civiglio record: Escape Collective, “Seixas broke Pogačar’s climbing record with Il Lombardia-winning attack”; IDL Pro Cycling, the Strava analysis; Watts2Win, the Civiglio segment; CyclingUpToDate, Pogačar in 2022.

Written with the help of Mnemosyne.