Felix Lowe
With just Milan-san Remo missing from the set, can Philippe Gilbert complete his monumental grand slam?
Can Philippe Gilbert complete a clean sweep of Monuments this year? Felix has his say
Two years ago, despite his spectacular salvo in the Tour of Flanders, Philippe Gilbert’s ambitious ‘Project Roubaix’ was still being met with mild derision. He’d only ever ridden the Hell of the North twice, and had yet to crack the top 10. Then he fought tooth and nail – tooth mainly – to beat Nils Politt in the velodrome to add another notch in a creaking bedpost already well grooved by wins at Liège and Lombardia.
Now the Belgian veteran has quit Quickstep to join the Wolfpack’s domestic rivals, Lotto-soudal. And he’s just a Via
Roma shock away from joining compatriots
Eddy Merckx, Rik van Looy and Roger de Vlaeminck as a winner of all five of cycling’s Monuments. Can he win an elusive MilanSan Remo? I truly hope so. Will he? That’s where it gets complicated.
Gilbert’s switch of teams at least gives him a chance. If he’d kept dancing with the wolves, he’d be playing second fiddle to defending champion Julian Alaphilippe, a rider who can win either side of the Poggio, plus new recruit Sam Bennett, who can mop up in a sprint.
Lotto do have a sprinting option in
Caleb Ewan, and a former winner in John
Degenkolb, but Gilbert is exactly the kind of unpredictable livewire they could employ as a foil, an opportunist who can turn softener into hard-hitting success.
Age seems to be the biggest obstacle (tell me about it, Phil). Gilbert’s best result at the race is third place, which he has managed twice, back in 2009 and 2011. The winners on those occasions were Fabian Cancellara and Matt Goss, both of whom have since retired from the sport. If Gilbert does triumph on Saturday 21st March, at 37 he will be the oldest ever winner of La Primavera, some 18 months more mature than Andrei Tchmil, the current oldest winner. The average age of San Remo winners over the past decade is 27.
Does Gilbert have anything going for him? Well, the new Lotto kit is pretty swag
(as the peloton’s younger representatives might say), while Quickstep’s new dungareeinspired team kits are so unappealing that Alaphilippe might not want to be too visible at the front of the race.
Also, La Classicissima has seen no repeat winners since Oscar Freire snared his third win in 2010. If that recent history continues then we can discount the likes of Alexander Kristoff, Arnaud Démare, Michal Kwiatkowski, Degenkolb, Vincenzo Nibali and the aforementioned Alaphilippe.
Gilbert also has the element of surprise on his side. As close as he is to a grand slam, no one really expects him to do it. It would be anachronistic, more sentimental than Richard Curtis at Christmas and the biggest surprise since Mat Hayman won Roubaix.
Perhaps Gilbert is the rider to break the mould, channel his inner Gianni Bugno and win with a long-pop on the Cipressa. Or perhaps he’ll do it like Tchmil in 1999 and kick clear under the flamme rouge. Maybe he’ll replicate Sean Kelly’s jawdropping Poggio descent of 1992.
Or perhaps he’ll do his best to set up teammate Ewan and trundle home in the peloton for 53rd place as Sagan snatches it. That’s probably the most likely outcome.
San Remo seems not only a step too far for Gilbert, but an entire Schlossberg
Stairs of implausibility.
Even Gilbert himself seems to think so: Mister Monument hasn’t used the hashtag #Striveforfive since December 2018. A clean sweep has never been so tantalisingly close and yet simultaneously so cruelly distant. He may have proved me wrong in Roubaix, but I’ll stick to my guns here: if Gilbert wins, I’ll eat a Lotto casquette.
Felix loves the taste of hat à l’orange