MIL A N - S A N R E MO
Established 1907 Editions 114 Recent winners Mathieu van der Poel (2023); Matej Mohorič (2022); Jasper Stuyven (2021)
IF THERE’S ONE THING
Milan-Sanremo has in its favour, it’s anticipation. Not just because it’s the season’s first Monument (the big five one-day races on the men’s calendar). Il Lombardia, the fifth Monument of the year, has the benefit of being the last, but other races can get lost on the calendar. Being first, however, commands a big audience, as well as a peloton fresh and chomping at the bit to get going. Anticipation is also reflected at Milan-Sanremo in the way the race unfolds.
Nudging 300km (2023’s course was 294km), it’s the longest race on the calendar and, for 90% of it, you’d be forgiven for thinking not much of note is happening. The peloton departs Milan to the south on flat roads, scales the Turchino Pass, descends to the Mediterranean coast and heads west along it for the second half. It gets more undulating at this point, followed by a trio of Capi – more substantial rises – in the final quarter. Still nothing much typically happens until the Cipressa (5.6km at 4.1%), which in many years can be negotiated without too much disruption to the peloton. It’s only on the Poggio (3.6km at 3.8%), 10km outside of Sanremo after over six hours of racing, where moves tend to be made.
Wins can be fashioned in several ways, including making a solo Poggio breakaway stick, with a daring descent off the Poggio or winning in a sprint of various sized bunches. The fact it happens so quickly, after so long without much happening at all, and that it can produce such a variety of winning scenarios, is what makes Milan-Sanremo so popular. It’s also one of the few races on the calendar that such different sorts of riders can win.
Sprinter Arnaud Démare, for example, won it in 2016, followed up two years later by Grand Tour winner Vincenzo Nibali. It’s a race that holds immense promise for so many riders at the outset, one in which there’s so much to be gained from the briefest of hard efforts and act of cunning in the finale. Last time out, big favourite Mathieu van der Poel finally added the race to his considerable palmares.