Weekend Preview: Milano-Sanremo
Breaking down the startlist, course and potential winners for the first one-day Monument of the season with tomorrow's Milan(o)-Sanremo
With Milan(o)-Sanremo, or la Classicissima di Primavera, running tomorrow, we’ve officially arrived in one-day Monument season (aka real racing). The marathon race, which has been reduced in recent years from its traditional 300kms+ down to 288km for 2024, takes the peloton from the heart of the industrial plains surrounding Milan(o) (they will technically be departing from Pavia this year) to the sunny Mediterranean locale of Sanremo.
Premium Beyond the Peloton members will get an immediate take on Saturday after the race (via a Three Quick Thoughts post) in advance of Monday’s full Key Takeaways breakdown.
2024 Course Profile
While conventional wisdom suggests the opening Monument is a chance for the sprinters to snag a Monument win, the golden age we are living in has recently seen the sport’s best grand tour riders duking it out against the sport’s best one-day riders and ultra-versatile sprinters.
The variety and firepower of the start list and a truly electric final 30 minutes of racing will likely make the finale Milan-Sanremo a can’t-miss. However, the long 288km course and lack of significant geographic features, until they hit the coast, mean that the vast majority of the route is a must-miss. So, please do not tune into the entire 8-hour broadcast and turn on your stream with 40km-to-go as the peloton begins their fight for position as they approach the penultimate climb, the Cipressa, duke it out up the final climb, the Poggio, with 10km-to-go before navigating the chaotic descent and scenic finishing straight along the Via Roma in Sanremo.
While most of the day features mind-numbingly dull (if not gorgeous) racing along the Ligurian coast, the kick-up the Poggio and plunge to the finish create a thrilling spectacle that, as The Cycling Podcast’s Daniel Friebe would say, is the ‘‘best ten minutes of the cycling season.’
The Late Attackers’ Classic
While the race is traditionally known as The Sprinters’ Classic, the last five years have seen a stark shift away from the pure sprinter demographic to more traditional all-rounders, even extending out to GC contenders. Michał Kwiatkowski won from a breakaway group in 2017, Vincenzo Nibali took a spectacular (kind of) solo victory in 2018, Julian Alaphilippe won from a 12-person bunch in 2019, Wout van Aert won a two-up sprint against Alaphilippe in 2020, Jasper Stuyven stuck another late solo move (even though he his finish time was counted on the same time as the chasers) in 2021, Matej Mohorič rode clear on the descent off the Poggio to get a solo victory in 2022, and Mathieu van der Poel bagged last year’s win with a solo attack after opening a slight gap up and over the top of the Poggio.
Adding to the evidence that the race is morphing into an event that favors late-attackers over sprinters, there is a clear trend line down when we look at the size of the final group from the past twenty editions.
What Does This Mean?
All of this should combine to tell us that we shouldn’t necessarily pick a pure sprinter like Jasper Philipsen or Jonathan Milan because the race is the “sprinter’s classic,” and we remember years of bunch sprints on the finishing straight.
Instead, we should expect a rider who can withstand the nuclear-fast pace of the Poggio. They should probably rename the race to ‘the pretty fast rider who can also climb’ classic.
With the rise of a fleet of young riders who can both climb and sprint at such a high level, it is hard to imagine reverting to the days of the peloton riding up the Cipressa and Poggio at a civil pace and then duking it out on the Via Roma from large group anytime soon.
Add in the fact that the arms race amongst these hybrid sprinter/climbers has been increasing the average climbing speeds of the Cipresso and Poggio, it means even if a sprinter makes it into Sanremo in the lead group, they will almost certainly lack teammates to reel in any late attacks (which is exactly what happened to Caleb Ewan in 2021) and give riders who can deal with the chaos and unrestrained racing that this will produce.
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