BERGAMO, Italy — The leaves were falling on the Passo di Ganda when Iker Zubizarreta decided he had waited long enough. Seven kilometers from the top of the last climb of the last monument of the season, the 25-year-old Basque rider shifted up, stood on the pedals and did not look back for 32 kilometers.
He won Il Lombardia on Saturday by 38 seconds, cresting the cobbled rise into Bergamo’s old town alone after 238 kilometers and 5 hours 48 minutes of racing from Como. Belgium’s Thibault Daems led in the chasing group for second, with Italy’s Lorenzo Casagrande third.
“I knew that if I waited for the descent, there would be five of us and I am not the fastest of five,” Mr. Zubizarreta said. “So I went where it hurt. It hurt a lot.”
Il Lombardia, first run in 1905 and known as the race of the falling leaves for its October date, closes the European season. It rewards climbers, and this year’s edition took in more than 4,400 meters of ascent, including the Madonna del Ghisallo, with its chapel of cycling relics, and the brutal Muro di Sormano, where gradients reach 25 percent.
The decisive move came on the Ganda, a 9-kilometer climb above the town of Selvino. A group of 11 had formed on the Sormano, and the pace set by Mr. Casagrande’s team had whittled it to seven by the time Mr. Zubizarreta attacked. The chasers, each unwilling to tow the others, let him go. By the summit he had 25 seconds; on the long, technical descent to Nembro he gained 15 more.
“We looked at each other one time too many,” said Mr. Daems, who finished second in a monument for the third time without a win. “That is one time more than you can afford against a rider like that.”
The win is the biggest of Mr. Zubizarreta’s career and the first in a monument for a Spanish rider since 2019. He grew up in the hills above Tolosa and said he had watched Il Lombardia on television every autumn as a boy. “It was always the race where the strong man won,” he said. “Not the fast man, not the clever man. The strong man. Today I was him.”
In the Piazza Vecchia, as the sun dropped behind the Città Alta’s towers, several thousand fans stayed to watch the podium ceremony in the cold. A season that began in January in the Australian summer ended with riders pulling on jackets. “Now we sleep,” Mr. Casagrande said. “Until January.”
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 11, 2026, Section D, Page 2 of the European edition with the headline: A Lone Attack on the Final Climb Wins Il Lombardia, the Race of the Falling Leaves.
