Weekend Preview: Milan-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 the important one-day races). The marathon race, which has been reduced in recent years from its traditional 300 kms+ to 289km for 2025, takes the peloton from the heart of the industrial plains surrounding Milan(o) (they will technically depart 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.
2025 Course Profile
While the season’s opening Monument used to be a chance for the sprinters to snag a major one-day win, the golden age we are currently in has meant that the race has become the platonic ideal of a modern race, one in which the best stage racers duke it out against the best one-day riders and ultra-versatile sprinters.
Most of the day may feature mind-numbingly dull (if not gorgeous) racing over the Passo del Turchino and along the Ligurian coast, but the steady pace increases as the peloton approaches the now-critical climb of the Cipressa, and mad-dash to the base of the Poggio, attacks on the climb itself and plunge to the finish create a thrilling spectacle that may now be the best half-hour of the season.
While most other editions in modern history have been raced in a way that has made the previous 5.5 hours a must-miss, the fascinating thing about Pogačar at this race is that he is one of the only riders who can violate all the rules and get away with it.
In fact, his success might depend on it. For example, in past editions, we’ve seen him clock mind-bendingly fast times up the Poggio, only to be unable to get clear. This makes me think that his best chance of winning this year is to have his strong UAE team press the issue as early as the Turchino climb, loading up his rivals’ legs with fatigue, before going all-out on the Cipressa to launch Pogačar.
If he gets clear alone, he is one of the only riders with the strength to hold off the chasing pack on the stretch of road between the final two climbs (not to mention that the chasing pack, decimated by the high pace, would likely struggle to reach a consensus on who should chase).
But even if he drags a few strong riders with him, like Mads Pedersen and Van der Poel, hitting the Poggio with a reduced group after a hard Cipressa climb could give him a chance to either drop them on the climb or fatigue their legs enough to give him a chance in the sprint.
How the Race Has Been Won
While the race is traditionally known as The Sprinters’ Classic, and Jasper Philipsen buttressed this designation with his reduced bunch sprint last year, the seven seasons prior to that saw a stark shift away from the pure sprinter demographic to more traditional all-rounders, even extending out to GC contenders.
2017: Michał Kwiatkowski won from a breakaway group.
2018: Vincenzo Nibali took a spectacular (kind of) solo victory
2019: Julian Alaphilippe won from a 12-person bunch
2020: Wout van Aert won a two-up sprint against Alaphilippe
2021: Jasper Stuyven stuck another late solo move (even though his finish time was counted on the same time as the chasers)
2022: Matej Mohorič rode clear on the descent off the Poggio to get a solo victory
Increasing Poggio Speeds Have Fundamentally Changed the Race
Perhaps the biggest reason the race has shifted away from the sprinters is the drastic increase in speeds on the final climb, the Poggio. This is largely due to non-sprinter stars like Tadej Pogačar and Mathieu van der Poel, who have turned it into their late-attack launch point.
These increases in speed have made positioning even more important heading into the final climb since even a slight gap near the top can be insurmountable on the descent, which, in turn, has further increased the speeds since every team is fighting all-out to be at the front on the approach of the climb. This has all combined to drastically change the dynamic of the post-Poggio stretch of the race, with fewer and fewer riders making the front group, meaning that even the editions with sprints are from smaller and smaller groups, which advantages the more versatile riders.
What Does This Mean for Saturday?
While Jasper Philipsen showed last year that sprinters still have a place at Sanremo, all of this should tell us that the eventual winner is more likely to be a late-attacker, who may not even need to pack any sprint to take the win. However, this isn’t to say that the ability to sprint isn’t helpful in the race.
The arms race amongst these hybrid sprinters/climbers greatly increased the average climbing speeds of the Cipressa and Poggio. This means that 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), which means they lack the ability to reel in slower riders who will inevitably attack them.
As we saw in 2024 with Philipsen and his teammate Mathieu van der Poel, a sprinter who can get up and over the Poggio with a teammate willing to close down late attacks can be the ticket to a win.
Unfortunately for most sprinters, they don’t have a generationally talented rider working for them, and their more mortal teammates are so gassed from putting them in position heading into the Poggio that they have nothing left to make it over the top of the climb in the front group, meaning they are left to fend for themselves in the final few kilometers.
Why Tadej Pogačar Is Fighting an Uphill Battle In His Quest for Victory
A nuclear-fast Poggio ascent might be table stakes to contest the win, but it isn’t necessarily how a rider actually bags the win. It is important to remember that the Poggio is only 4km-long at a 3.6% average gradient, which means outside of highly unique circumstances, it isn’t hard enough to provide a launchpad for a single rider, and instead favors a rider with a strong sprint, great positioning skills, and most importantly, patience.
With the average speed in the front group on the climb reaching 38.5km/h/24mph, the front group is climbing roughly 30 seconds faster than Vincenzo Nibali when he soloed off the front on the climb in 2018. At these speeds, drafting will neutralize any attacks until the very top of the climb, at which point even a major attack (like Alaphilippes’ 30-second long, 810-watt average burst in 2019) is likely to allow a few extremely fit companions to latch on.
Even though Van der Poel technically gained a gap at the top of the climb the last time the race was won solo, it was only by a few bike lengths. He used the summit and ensuing downhill switchbacks to extend his lead.
This means that if Pogačar wants to check Sanremo off his list of un-won major races, he either needs to save everything for a late-Poggio perfectly-timed attack or needs to employ a long-bomb strategy by attacking further out on the penultimate climb, the Cipressa, which is how Gianni Bugno won in 1990.
With the flat 16km stretch between the final two climbs theoretically giving a chase group plenty of room to reel him in following an attack on the Cipressa, it is very possible that second-group syndrome, where everyone refuses to work in an attempt to get their rivals to work, could tip the scales in his favor.
So, Who Will Win?
This ‘ease’ of the course makes MSR incredibly difficult to predict, but you might not know this when looking at the betting odds. Due to his unique mix of elite climbing and sprinting ability, Mathieu van der Poel, and Tadej Pogačar, due to his ability to stick uphill attacks when everyone knows they are coming, are the two massive favorites, Meanwhile, a handful of in-form riders, like Mads Pedersen, Tom Pidcock, Filippo Ganna and Jonathan Milan, are priced at discount rates behind.
Notable Current Betting Odds & Implied Probability of Winning For Select Riders:
Tadej Pogačar +250/28.7%
Mathieu van der Poel +350/22.2%
Mads Pedersen +500/16.7%
Jasper Philipsen +700/12.50%
Filippo Ganna +800/11.1%
Jonathan Milan +1400/6.7%
Tom Pidcock +1400/6.7%
Michael Matthews +2500/3.9%
Olav Kooij +3300/2.9%
Matej Mohoric +3300/2.9%
Tadej Pogačar, while clearly the best rider in the world at the moment (and potentially of all time), obviously should be considered a major threat to win, but he will have a difficult time navigating the intensely difficult tactical battle up and over the Poggio.
In short, this course just might not be hard enough for him to deploy his unstoppable weapon of superior watts per kilo. Instead, it will likely be won by the rider who sits, waits, and is forgotten about by the others until it is too late to reel them in.
The dynamic of the race being hard enough for the strongest riders to string it out with their immense strength but not so hard that they can simply ride clear of their competition means that slightly lower-profile but nearly equally strong riders have an opportunity to counterattack and stay clear for the win if they can survive the initial assault.
This is where riders like Mads Pedersen and Filippo Ganna, both on amazing form so far this season, could find a path to victory, and why the race traditionally tends to inversely favor the sub-top tier favorites.
The main takeaways here should be that while Tadej Pogačar is the heavy favorite, Mathieu van der Poel is the rider best suited to win the race. And even if MSR is an extremely difficult race for the favorite, he likely presents the best betting value.
How/Where/When to Watch
Where/When to Watch:
Where: Max (USA & Europe), FloBikes (Canada), Discovery+/TNT Sports (UK & Ireland)
When: Saturday, March, 22nd 5:00 a.m. – 11:50 a.m. EST (estimate)
Americans in the Race: Neilson Powless (EF Education-EasyPost), Kevin Vermaerke (Picnic-PostNL)