Nibali de ! ies San Remo convention
One of the recurring tropes of the 2018 season has been the clash of different kinds of riders at the front of some of the biggest races. In Strade Bianche, for example, the final top three were a Classics specialist, Tiesj Benoot, a grand tour specialist, Romain Bardet, and a cyclo-cross rider, Wout Van Aert.
Vincenzo Nibali’s solo win at Milan-San Remo pitched him against out-and-out bunch sprinters. Nibali is primarily known as a grand tour rider, though his one-day record is now decorated with two monuments (he’s won Lombardia twice) and a second place in Liège-Bastogne-Liège. However, he’s no sprinter. The Italian shared the podium with Caleb Ewan and Arnaud Démare, and for the second year in a row the Classic most suited to bunch finishes went to a breakaway win.
Milan-San Remo is the perfect example of the slow build, and in 2018, the nerve of the peloton held for a long, long time. Through the race, nothing was happening, but everything was happening. The long, languid pianissimo of the opening phase of the race was followed by a gradual acceleration along the coast. A persistent headwind coming from the west, blowing along the Mediterranean coast, meant that attacks would have been even more doomed than normal, and also that the peloton was still huge and in one piece, even as it entered the Poggio.
Démare’s Groupama-FDJ team were an assertive presence on the front up, over and beyond the Cipressa. After his victory in this race in 2016, Démare was accused of holding on to a team car, though this was never proven. This time round, he had the advantage of sitting behind a train. With Groupama, along with several other sprint trains lined up on the front of the bunch, the race resembled a Tour stage – the pace and the headwind meant that attacking would have been nothing but a waste of time.
However, on the Poggio, the favourites were left on the front immediately. This meant that Nibali’s attack, made in almost the same place as his attack in the 2012 race (which took clear Fabian Cancellara and eventual race winner Simon Gerrans) was not closed down straight away. He’d first followed Israel Cycling Academy’s Krists Neilands, then gone again on his own. With his Bahrain-Merida team-mates partially blocking the road, the Italian made good his escape. It wasn’t just that nobody was chasing – hard attacks by Nathan Haas and Enrico Battaglin, which came to naught – showed how fast Nibali was riding.
Peter Sagan and Michael Matthews, both pre-race favourites and strong sprinters, did part of the chasing, but their job was to sprint, not to take others to the finish. It was only when Daniel Oss, Sagan’s team-mate, found his way to the front of the peloton that the huge gap to Nibali, which had opened to
12 seconds at the top of the Poggio, began to shrink. While the sprinters waited for their reinforcements to gather, Matteo Trentin surged into the gap between the peloton and Nibali, but he couldn’t make headway on the Italian. The gap held at a similar level until Jacopo Guarnieri of Groupama got himself on to the front of the peloton. Quick-Step then gave Elia Viviani a brilliant two-man lead-out through the streets of San Remo and onto the Via Roma.
But Nibali had timed his effort to perfection. He’d built enough of a lead to win, and also to give himself 20 metres’ worth of time to savour a victory salute. By just a few metres after the finish line, Caleb Ewan had come past him.