A CLASSIC RACE
The most predictable thing about Milan-San Remo is the debate about its predictability
Trek rider Koen De Kort says there is a moment in every Milan-San Remo where strength and illusions dissolve. “It is 40km longer than anything else we ride, but you go 200km without even knowing what your legs are like because it feels so easy. Then it starts and ends in a flash: you can go from feeling good to useless in the first 100m of the Poggio.”
Riders have strained to impart the complexities of ‘La Classicissima’ for decades, yet to many fans it remains the most predictable, least watchable of the Monuments. As much as the two iconic climbs that used to inspire decisive attacks, the Cipressa and the Poggio, the post-race debate about whether the 298km route needs an overhaul is now the race’s most reliable tradition. The reality is that the Classicissima has already undergone a meaningful change in recent years. Like most things about Milan-San Remo, the tweak was as subtle as the brushstroke of a Renaissance master; Le Manie had only been added to the route in 2008, was only 4.7km long and came 95km from San Remo, yet its removal in 2014 would transform the race. Just ask Alexander Kristoff. In the winter of 2013-2014, Kristoff expressed his quiet delight at Le Manie’s omission to his Katusha team. The climb had been his bête noire, its slow-acting venom slowly rising through his muscles on the Capi, over the Cipressa and Poggio, then stifling his final sprint. A few weeks later, Kristoff duly won his first Monument on San Remo’s Lungomare Calvino. Even the most cursory viewing of the finale confirmed that it had been a different race for everyone: 27 riders had swung on to the seafront still in contention, as against three in 2012.
One wonders now whether this trend will continue or indeed accelerate. In 1960, the Poggio was introduced after a run of three consecutive bunch gallops – and the next time even a small group sprinted for victory was six years later. Similarly, the Cipressa appeared in 1982, having been recommended to race chief Vincenzo Torriani a few years earlier by a local flower seller. Riders’ reactions