Milano-Sanremo Preview

Every year, it’s the first Monument on the calendar. The 115th Milano-Sanremo is Saturday, March 16.

Before we dive into this year’s edition, here’s a question for both casual and hardcore cycling fans: What is a Monument? Well one answer, as Patrick Broe of the Lanterne Rouge Cycling Podcast put it, is “I don’t know”. Or, according to his co-host Benji Naesen, “The Monuments are five of the longest, hardest, and oldest one-day cycling races that take place each year.” The Monuments are considered to be a cut above the other World Tour one-day races in terms of their prestige, and they award more UCI points for high placings. The five Monuments are, in calendar order: Milano-Sanremo, Ronde van Vlaanderen, Paris-Roubaix, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, and Il Lombardia. The first four take place in the spring, while Lombardia is always in October.

What sets the Monuments apart from other races is that they are usually longer (with the exception of non-Monuments like Gent-Wevelgem, which is 260km) than the other prestigious races. But other than that, there ain’t much reason they are “Monuments” and races like Strade Bianche are not besides some arbitrary designation by the media a few decades ago.

Most of the contemporary professional peloton is all-in on the “Monument/non-Monument” narrative, which means that the top riders are more surgically targeting the Monuments than ever before. Mathieu van der Poel last year, for example, won two Monuments, the World Championship Road Race, and finished second in a third Monument, but was pretty irrelevant the rest of the season. He’s actually an exception to the rule for the “Big Six” who mostly tend to clean up smaller races in addition to dominating the big ones. That being said, a rider like Remco Evenepoel would trade ten Figuera Champions’ Classics (which he won easily this year) for a third Liege-Bastogne-Liege title. The Monuments are just that much more important.

For me, I’m 75 percent bought into the Monument/non-Monument thing. There are some one-day races that are not Monuments that are huge additions to even a Big Six rider’s palmares, like Strade, the Canadian Classics, E3 Saxo Classic, etc. But the Monuments are so much bigger than even those races that the Big Boiz want to run up the score on those rather than adding a race like Omloop het Niueuwsblad to their palmares. MVDP, for example, skips Omloop every year to focus on his preparation for MSR, RVV, PR, and this year LBL too. Pogi has won Lombardia three years running and will aim for a fourth this year. I think the Monuments do indeed outweigh the other one-day races, but I still think winning the other major cobbled classics is important for a rider like MVDP, Wout van Aert, and even Pogi if he has the room in his schedule.

In terms of how the Monuments stack up against each other, interestingly, even the most hardcore cycling fans disagree about the order of prestige among the Monuments (and how the World Championship Road Race fits into the equation). Probably the most common order is 1). Paris-Roubaix 2). Ronde van Vlaanderen 3). Liege-Bastogne-Liege 4). Milano-Sanremo 5). Il Lombardia with the World Championships above even RBX. Yes, the Italy disrespect is enormous.

My own ranking is RVV, RBX, LBL, LOM, MSR. I just love Flanders; it’s probably my favorite race on the entire calendar, and it’s such a brute now with climbers and puncheurs in the equation, rather than just Roubaix-lite engines. And it’s in the truest cycling heartland. RBX has to be second, LBL the coolest route on paper, but doesn’t usually pan out to be that exciting, Lombardia is the most beautiful scenery and a nice climbers’ race, and MSR is just flat for the most part, so you normally get about 6 hours of nothing before the explosion on the final hills. That’s not to say I dislike any of these races; as a cycling fanatic, they are all awesome and the tradition and rich history with each unique race are what the sport is all about.

Anyway, now that I have properly denigrated a Monument which some actually put at the top of the heap, let’s discuss the 2024 Milano-Sanremo.

The most unique thing about the race is its length. Clocking in at 288 kilometers, MSR is the longest professional road cycling race on Earth. In this era of uber-cyclists who generally sweep every big race, the distance doesn’t change a thing regarding who is competitive. Because the race is almost totally flat for 230km, all of the team leaders just sit in the wheels for 5-6 hours pushing 200 watts, which is comically easy for professional cyclists. That doesn’t add any meaningful fatigue to riders like Mathieu van der Poel or Tadej Pogacar.

So the hills of significance start 230km into the race with the three “Capi” along the coastline. They are all short punches that only serve to drop the weakest sprinters and inject a bit of worry into the minds of the contenders that aren’t on good form. At 260km, the Cipressa commences. This is the hardest climb in the race, but the thing with the MSR hills is that they aren’t steep. The Cipressa is about 5k at 4 percent. There is always talk of an attack on the Cipressa, but with the modern peloton, it probably isn’t going to work, and it’s a huge risk. The final hill is the Poggio, which is about 4k at 3.7 percent. These are normally easy climbs for pro cyclists, but the ferocity of the pace up these hills makes MSR a unique race. Most of the decisive action usually takes place later on the Poggio. That is where I expect the big boys to separate themselves this year, too.

Contenders in order of my favorites:

Tadej Pogacar: The Slovenian superstar clearly has made this his biggest early-season target, skipping the cobbles and doing a light schedule in the run-in to the Giro d’Italia. He won Strade Bianche two weeks ago with an 81km solo attack and a 3-minute margin over second-place. I think he is in better form than ever before, and he will need to be in order to win this year. Because the Poggio and Cipressa are shallow climbs, he needs a strong team to go ballistic in order to hurt his heavier rivals before Pogi’s inevitable attack on the steeper slopes of the Poggio. An attack on the Cipressa is impossible even for a rider like him. As in Flanders last year, he needs to go solo over the Poggio with decent margin because his rivals will likely cooperate behind, and some, like MVDP, are better descenders.

His team: Alessandro Covi, Marc Hirschi, Tim Wellens, Brandon McNulty, Domen Novak, Diego Ulissi. It’s an odd selection in my view; I do love that McNulty was a late add and Wellens is back, but I’m not seeing a flat engine to control the early break (though other teams will likely do that) and I feel there were better options in the team for the Cipressa. Nils Pollitt and Mikkel Bjerg should replace Ulissi and Novak; they are better suited for these shallow climbs. That being said, I think Wellens, McNulty, and Hirschi can make a good pace on the Cipressa and Poggio; whether it will be enough to cook MVDP in the wheels is the question. I don’t think it will, so Pogi will have to launch a really special attack in order to go solo.

Mathieu van der Poel: The defending champion enters this race with zero 2024 road race days in his legs. Most of the top guys come out firing on all cylinders in their opening races nowadays, but I’m not 100 percent confident in MVDP’s form without any feedback to go on. That being said, he is rumored to be better than ever in training, and if that’s the case, he’s the favorite for this year. The route suits him so much better than Pogacar that the Slovenian has to be significantly better in order to win. Even if MVDP is two percent worse than Pogi, he’ll probably take the victory, because draft is so important on the shallow climbs that decide MSR, and MVDP has a much better sprint.

His team: Michael Gogl, Juri Hollmann, Soren Kragh Andersen, Axel Laurance, Xandro Meurisse, Jasper Philipsen. It’s not the strongest team in the race by any means, but it’s an interesting one. I don’t think they need to do much besides put up a few sacrificial lambs in the opening flat 200k to keep the breakaway in check. The team will be expected to control most of the day, and I see Hollmann (who I’ve never heard of tbh), Meurisse, and possibly Gogl doing the early work. I think once the peloton hits the Capi they’ll get off of the front and let UAE dictate things. The slower the pace on the climbs, the better, because if they manage to keep Philipsen in the game, they’ll have two or three options assuming Soren is at his usual level. Philipsen, being the fastest sprinter on paper in the race, is a wild-card here. I don’t think he’ll survive the Poggio, though, so MVDP has to be the clear-cut leader with the ability to win from a few different scenarios.

Mads Pedersen: His best result in this race so far is 6th place. But this is one of his biggest targets of the entire season, and he’s been on good form so far this year. So he might be in the conversation for the victory. I don’t see it; the Poggio is going to be climbed too quickly for him. He just is not on the level of MVDP and Pogi (yet?). Pedersen is unfathomably good and dominates races in which the Big Six aren’t present, but he’s never won a Monument and rarely manages to beat the Big Six. I will tip my cap to his 2019 WCRR victory, but that was in hellish conditions and he has yet to truly back it up. However, I still think Pedersen is a good shout for a podium finish here.

His team: Toms Skujins, Jacopo Mosca, Ryan Gibbons, Alex Kirsch, Jonathan Milan, Jasper Stuyven. This team is so strong that it raises the question of whether Pedersen is even the out-and-out leader with a former winner of this race in Stuyven, a flying Skujins, and a faster bunch sprinter in Milan in the line-up. That being said, the team is pretty clearly backing Pedersen as the head honcho, which I think is wise because the profile suits him better than the rest of the team. Gibbons, Kirsch, and Mosca will work early, Milan will drop early on the Cipressa, Stuyven and Skujins will likely hang on for a while into the Poggio but ultimately succumb to the pace. I think Pedersen will be on his own at the crucial moment and will just not have the watts to close the two big men going lightning speed up the hill.

There are other contenders in the field including Filippo Ganna, Matej Mohoric, Stefan Kung, Biniam Girmay, and Neilson Powless, but I don’t see their abilities as up to snuff with the way MSR is raced these days; nor are their teams as worthy of a full review. Ganna is the one guy who on his best day could ride with MVDP and Pogi on this route (he finished second last year) but his legs have been shit so far this season and I think he’s only focused on the Giro and Olympics.

Prediction time:

1). Tadej Pogacar 2). Mathieu van der Poel 3). Mads Pedersen

I’m gonna take the chalk for another race in Italy, though most people probably have the top two reversed.

I’ll probably get labeled an MSR Pogi truther or Flat Earther or whatever term is in vogue these days, but I don’t think the cycling universe has yet fully comprehended the scale of Tadej Pogacar’s godlike abilities on a bicycle. As good as everyone knows he is, most people are trying to pump the brakes on the Five Monument dream (which would require winning the flat Paris-Roubaix too; MSR and RBX are the two he doesn’t have yet). “THE RACE DOESN’T SUIT HIM!” so goes the Twitter peanut gallery. Doesn’t matter when he’s that good. “He doesn’t have the team for it!” Again, doesn’t matter that much. He’s going to attack on the steep section of the Poggio and no one is going to be able to follow. He’ll go solo to the finish and win by about 10 seconds over MVDP, who will chase desperately and at a level that would catch and defeat other rider in history (as played out in Flanders last year) but it won’t be enough to reel in Pogi.

And guess what? Pogacar is going to win Paris-Roubaix within the next three years, too. I need only to point to the flat cobbled stage of the 2022 Tour de France in which he was the strongest in the race, by far. Of course he can win Paris-Roubaix, and in my view if he gains a few kilograms, he’ll actually enter his debut RBX as the favorite.

That’s a few years away, most likely, he’s gotta get MSR and the Giro d’Italia this year and the Vuelta next year. Hopefully he snags a few more yellow jerseys in the meantime.

Pogi is the only cyclist in the modern era with the ability to win all seven major tours (one-weekers), all three Grand Tours, and all five Monuments, and the World Championship Road Race. No cyclist in history has achieved that, not even Eddy Mercx.

Why did on go on a major tangent about my favorite cyclist in a preview for what I consider the least-prestigious Monument? Because I think, somehow, people still underestimate the man. There has literally, in over a century of the sport, never been a rider like him. He is 25 years old and I would say just entering his prime. He dismantled the best non-Galactico cyclists in the world by three minutes in his first race of the season. He’s better than he’s ever been and will win races that don’t suit him, including the 2024 MSR.

Anyways, that’s enough fawning for a Monument preview. Pedersen will win a small group sprint for third place.

So that’s what’s going to happen in Milano-Sanremo 2024. Hopefully I’m not 100 percent off-base! Please roast me in the comments and on Twitter if I am. Otherwise, we can all bask in the glory of the greatest cyclist of all time in action adding another Monument to his rich palmares.

Let’s go!

Jamie