We all know how Milan-Sanremo unfolds: a big breakaway of mostly unknown riders goes clear early on, builds a lead beyond 10 minutes, and then is slowly brought back as the race ticks towards the 250km mark. From there, the peloton jostle for position, the bunch is thinned out over the Cipressa, and then attacks fly like erratic fireworks on the Poggio before a finish on the Via Roma, won by a solo attacker or settled by a small sprint.
But what if the rulebook is thrown out of the window? What if, in Tadej Pogačar’s well-documented and agonising quest for victory in the season’s first Monument – “it’s a tough one to crack,” he said the evening before – the Cipressa and Poggio aren’t the decisive moments of the race? What if the trio of Capos – Mele, Cervo and Berta – act as springboards, between 49 and 62km out? Or, even more unheard of, what if the Passo del Turchino, crested 160km from the finale, is where a fateful bomb is detonated?
“I think UAE… they will be inventive tomorrow,” predicted Picnic-PostNL’s John Degenkolb, winner of this race in 2015. “If there’s any team in the race who can smash it there [on the Turchino] and make some damage, it’s UAE for sure. They know how to race, but they didn’t succeed in the last two years, so they need another way.”
But surely not, John? Not on the Turchino. “Look, it’s not only the Poggio,” he continued. “On paper maybe it doesn’t look so difficult, but it’s a hard parcours. If you get a super high speed on the Capo Mere, Cerva and Berta, then you can already make a small selection before the Cipressa even starts. That would be the key for UAE and Pogačar to really make everyone suffer before everyone at home starts watching the race.
“You arrive there with more than 200km in your legs, and with the weather [rain is likely], temperatures [between 8-14 degrees] and conditions, it will play a big role. I remember in 2013 when we stopped the race on the Turchino because of snow, and then in 2014 we had horrible rain and cold. It means you are not in the same condition, and not the same rider to overcome such conditions.”
Degenkolb isn’t the only one expecting UAE Team Emirates-XRG to declare war at around midday, just a few hours into the marathon race. “I think all day UAE are going to be putting massive calories into the rest of us to try to make it as hard as possible for Tadej to really burn us in the final,” Michael Matthews of Jayco-Alula said. Intermarché-Wanty’s Binian Girmay also agreed: “UAE have tried in the last two years to increase the speed on the Cipressa but it didn’t really happen, so I have a feeling they will try something earlier.”
The three Capos, then, could be crucial. “A group is most likely never going to go away on those climbs, but ride them hard enough and it hurts the legs,” said EF Education-EasyPost’s Neilson Powless. “We’re still pushing 400 watts in the wheels over them, but it’s probably too fast to make a real selection. The only goal of those climbs if you’re really trying to make it as hard a race as possible is to soften people’s legs a bit, and hope you did it enough to blow it apart on the Cipressa.”
Not since 1996 when Gabriele Colombo won has an attacker on the Cipressa been victorious on the Via Roma. Twenty-nine years later, will that change? “There’s always a lull between that and the Poggio, but who knows, maybe UAE will ride it so hard this year that it’s full-on racing between them both,” Powless added. “That’s where I’m expecting it to blow up this year. It’s difficult to get a full team organised there but if you can do it, it would make the race really exciting.” The American found someone agreeing with him in Lidl-Trek’s Jasper Stuyven, victor of this race in 2021. “You see solos from 100km nowadays, so what’s wrong with the 12km in between [the Cipressa and Poggio]? It’s up to the other guys to try, to prove that it’s possible, no?”
Or better said: it’s up to Pogačar, the main man, to surprise us all. “By being the best – it’s as simple as that,” is how the Slovenian answered the inevitable question of how he wins. “You need to have some luck, be prepared, be concentrated, have power, have the team around you. Everything needs to go perfectly. Anything can be possible, you never know. This race, so many details come into the tactics. We can talk about where you can attack or what you can do, but any small detail throughout the day can change everything.”
He’s keeping his cards close to his chest, but a reminder from Q36.5’s Tom Pidcock that Pogacar isn’t the only one in with a chance. “There is no such thing as one favourite in Milan-Sanremo – only a group of riders that can win,” he smiled. How, as well as who, is the burning question.
