THE IMPOSSIBLE ESCAPE

17.03.2018 MILAN SAN REMO

Vincenzo Nibali has a breadth of palmarès that very few riders can match. In winning Milan-San Remo this year, he became only the second current rider who has won both a grand tour and a monument. He’s also one of seven riders in history to have won all three grand tours over the course of his career.

He’s also had to fight for every single one of his big wins. He rarely seems to start a big race as the favourite - he was not favoured to win the 2013 Giro, or the 2014 Tour. And when he was, as at the 2016 Giro, he conceded time in the middle of the race, with only a pitched final-weekend battle giving him pink.

So when he attacked on the Poggio in Milan-San Remo, the odds were stacked against him. After all, he’d tried this move before - in 2011, 2012 and 2016. You could argue that 2012 had been his best shot - the three-man group that formed around his attack was the winning one, but he’d been easily beaten in the sprint by Simon Gerrans.

Nibali’s timing was good, and lucky. He followed a move by Israel Cycling Academy’s Krists Neilands and benefitted from his draft before his second jump took him away. Alone, it looked like he had no chance, and the foreshortening of the television pictures on the run-in to the finish made it look like the peloton was almost on his back. But Nibali knew he’d done enough - no more, no less. He crossed the line with arms aloft, while runner-up Caleb Ewan passed him just a couple of metres after the line.