With spring knocking on the door, the 114th Milano – Sanremo will be staged tomorrow. We will leave at 10am from Abbiategrasso, at the southern gates of the Lombard capital, to reach the city of flowers around 5pm after 294 kilometres. Halfway through the route, after having crossed the Passo del Turchino, the runners will meet the sea in Voltri. At this point, the race will join the Aurelia. Immediately after Alassio, at minus 60 from the finish, the three historic leaders will face each other in rapid sequence, in the order Mele, Cervo and Berta. After that, after Imperia, you will arrive in San Lorenzo al Mare where the race will get underway. In fact, 28 kilometers from the finish line, the ascent of Costa Rainera will begin, just over 5,000 meters of ascent with an average gradient of just over 4% and a rough section that borders on double figures. There is no doubt that this is the hardest point of the path, even if not selective enough to create a decisive break. In fact, after the demanding descent which will bring the runners back to the SS1, there will be ten kilometers of seafront which seems to have been made on purpose to facilitate the return of a chasing group. After passing Arma di Taggia, the race with minus nine to go will face the Poggio, the traditional springboard towards the final banner in Via Roma.
Custom has it that the dispute is decided at the end of this climb, more precisely in the space of almost five kilometers between the last ascent, an interminable slight slope, and the three and a half descents, an authentic big snake with often blind curves that brings the runners back on the Aurelia two thousand meters from the finish. Often it was enough for a runner to gain twenty meters to the top of the Poggio to then arrive alone at the finish line. This Vincenzo Nibali did five years ago, going on to conquer the most improbable of the many splendid victories of his glorious career. Matej Mohoric (Bahrain Victorious) last year instead waited for the start of the dive to give life to the most reckless descent in the more than 100-year history of the spring classic. For the record, since 2016, an edition in which the French Arnaud Demare (Groupama FDJ) prevailed, success has not been decided in a group sprint.
The eyes of the world tomorrow will be all on Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates). The champion from Komenda has approached the race with an opposite program since last year, when he arrived there after having conquered Strade Bianche and Tirreno–Adriatico with impressive ease. This season, the Slovenian has chosen the Paris-Nice as a running test, providing probably even more comforting answers than twelve months ago. We just need to understand how his opponents will manage what seems obvious: a frenetic pace on the climb that leads to Cipressa in view of the decisive attack on the Poggio. This will presumably be the decisive moment in which the Flemish Wout van Aert (Jumbo Visma), his eternal rival, the Dutch Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin Deceuninck), the unpredictable French Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal Quick Step), the Australian sprinter almond-eyed Caleb Ewan (Lotto Dstny), the defending champion Mohoric and, from an Italian perspective, Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) will have to prove capable of playing their cards to the end.
The hour record holder is the only Italian who can have objective hopes of victory. It is even more so after the renunciation of the man who should have captained the British squadron: the Olympic mountain bike champion, Thomas Pidcock. Talking about the marginality of the blue participation sounds mocking considering the results of the beginning of the third millennium with four victories over five years in Via Roma: Mario Cipollini in 2002, Paolo Bettini the following year, Alessandro Petacchi in 2005 and, finally, Filippo Pozzato twelve months later. The years following the aforementioned poker have unfortunately shown that, if it weren’t for the flash of the Jaws in 2018, today we would be experiencing a situation similar to the eve of 1970, the year in which Michele Dancelli ended a 17-year fast following the double by Loretto Petrucci in 1952/53. Let’s hope, therefore, that the number of the hour record holder will come out tomorrow on the wheel of Sanremo. Otherwise, you can always console yourself with a good beignet.
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