It's time for the first monument of the year and the longest race of the year - 298 km without the neutral start. Yes, boysngals, it's the Milano-San Remo weekend.
Legendary Danish poet, sports commentator, and film director of the Paris-Roubaix documentary A Sunday in Hell (1976) said it better than I could:
Milano-San Remo is a race where for the longest time nothing happens, and then - suddenly - everything happens!
He said it in Danish, of course, but you get the gist of it. If you watch this from start to finish - and I recommend it - you'll have time for a nap, a snack, and a board game while you wait for the riders to approach the final 70 kms at which point your pulse will slowly start to rise as the climbs start to come - Capo Mele, Capo Cervo, Capo Berta - steady breath - and then.... leading into the Cipressa, your mouth will start to go dry as the peloton fights like madmen to get their hopefuls into position for the climb and then POW, it's the finale and it lasts for the next ~25 kilometers and if you have a heart, I guarantee that you'll hit pulse 200 somewhere along the way.
So who'll win? Well - that's anyone's guess. Here are the PCS top competitors:
- POGAČAR Tadej
- DEL TORO Isaac
- PEDERSEN Mads
- VAN DER POEL Mathieu
- PIDCOCK Thomas
- MAGNIER Paul
- MCNULTY Brandon
- VAN AERT Wout
- BRENNAN Matthew
- ANDRESEN Tobias Lund
Please don't let it be Pogacar, though.
Ah yes, the race I almost always almost miss, because it is on a Saturday and not on a Sunday. 😃
Actually, it is the descents which scare the shit out of me. I didn't breath once during Niccolo Bonifazio's descent of the Cipressa in 2019. And then you have those who go like braindead loonies in the descent of the Poggio, like Mohoric once.
The last mile before climbing the Cipressa (or Poggio) used to be quite scary too, because of the crazy speed of trains and riders trying to reach the front while there were several obstacles on the road, but the last few times didn't look so scary. I don't know if the road was somewhat improved, or if filming is different, or something else. They most likely don't go more slowly 😃
I """rode""" the final part on home-trainer once a few years ago. I hadn't checked the profile. Given the speed at which the riders go on TV, I thought the Cipressa was a short false flat. Yeah... So, on the flat before (our course started a couple of miles before the Cipressa), I was going almost as fast as I could, at the front of the bunch. The others aren't better than me, great, was I thinking! And then, well... hey, but that's a real climb, that's not like on TV, oh dear... and riders started to take me over, and again, and again, and the climb was never ending, and almost everyone went past me, and the first ones were quickly so far away from me that there was obviously no hope for me to join them again later. On the flat, I tried to ride with other riders, as the software simulates some drafting effect, but it is hard to 'lock' to others when there are only 2 or 3 people. Also, with my heavy heavy heavy weight (and I wasn't cheating about it), I was suffering a lot in climbs, but then I had ended up with weaker (less powerful) riders on the flat, whom I would catch and drop even if I didn't really want to drop them. So in fact I had to ride most of the rest of the race alone. There was a guest rider from an Italian Pro Team. When I was about to reach the start of the Poggio, he was already crossing the finish line in San Remo 🤣 The Poggio was easier but I was already long cooked. I had gone basically full gaz from the beginning to the end (and that lasted more than 1 hour...), I was dead on arrival 🤣