I dreamt I woke up on the final descent off the Poggio, seven hours in the legs and the saddle already and right where the Italian heavens never seemed so near, the late afternoon sun sinking like a ship out on the Mediterranean and streaming its last light towards the Via Roma.
This is what happens when you fall asleep reading about Milan-San Remo, the first of the five Monuments of cycling, one of the oldest, the longest and most magnificently beautiful of all the one-day races – this Saturday’s 112th edition now complete with every necessary ingredient for a proper spring classic.
It absolutely is, as the locals say around Milano-Samremo, La Classicissima di Primavera. And like Bartali and Coppi and Merckx and other winning names it has somehow always resonated dreamlike even if you’ve never been to Milan or Sam Remo for that matter.
At just under 300km – 299km, to be exact – it’s the equivalent of cycling from Dublin to Achill Island, leaving some flat distance for a final bunch sprint, assuming it comes down to that.
It may be known as the sprinters’ Monument, given the route is mostly flat, departing from the industrial heartland of the north and heading southwest through Lombardy and Piedmont towards the Italian Riviera, hugging the Ligurian coast towards the faded-glory of San Remo, only with two often telling climactic climbs: the Cipressa (with 20km to go), then the Poggio (with 6km to go).
That final descent off the Poggio is 3.3km, leaving an entirely flat 2.2km run onto the Via Roma, the city’s famed shopping street, where in truth anything can and often does happen.
What is certain is that for only the second time in the long history of Milan-San Remo an Irish rider is being touted as a potential winner: the first was Seán Kelly, who managed to win not once but twice; now as if on cue again up rides Sam Bennett cut from the same Carrick-on-Suir cloth.
There is a chapter in The Ascent, Barry Ryan’s landscape painting-like history of Irish cycling, titled The Last Hurrah, which looks at the endgame of Kelly and Stephen Roche in the pro peloton.
Kelly won his first Milan-San Remo in his prime of 1986 (also winning Paris-Nice, Paris-Roubaix, plus 12 various stage wins); he was considered well past that prime in March of 1992, two months shy of his 36th birthday, when most sprinters lose much of their leg speed and often their nerve too.
The previous August, on the eve the Tour of Galicia, Kelly got a phone call in the hotel room he was sharing with Martin Earley to inform him that his older brother Joe, one of his first and lasting influences in sport and in life, had been killed instantly, at the age of 39, hit by a car in the final miles of the Comeragh 100, just off the Seskin Hill so close to their home.
As crippling and crushing as that was, Kelly was back on his bike barely a week later, before burying some of his grieving it seemed by winning another Nissan Classic that September.
Last win
Even with a bright start to 1992, his 16th season as a pro, he wasn’t expected to challenge for another Milan-San Remo, certainly not once Moreno Argentin broke clear on the ascent of the Poggio, Italy’s world champion from 1986 (who infamously sat on Kelly’s wheel in Villach in 1987), racing 15 seconds clear as they dropped down again towards the Via Roma. Whatever about his legs, Kelly’s nerve was indeed questionable, in part because of what happened to his brother seven months previous.
Only Kelly knows what chances he took on that descent, because against all the odds he caught Argentin with 1km remaining, feigned a bit of oxygen debt, and then outsprinted him to the finish line. No rider older has won it since.
It was Kelly’s ninth Monument win in all, his last win of any significance. He rode a couple more half seasons before retiring in 1994, pro cycling by then entering another new era, namely the EPO one.
That Bennett now finds himself as a potential Irish winner, some 30 years after Kelly, is another reminding that riders like him only come around once in a generation, if at all.
It’s actually his sixth Milan-San Remo start, and while traditionally the sprinters have as good a chance as any to triumph, the last four editions were decided by moves over the Poggio, including last year, the Covid-delayed race in August won by Wout van Aert from Belgium, the only rider to stay close enough to the big gear of Julian Alaphilippe to outsprint him to the finish line.
Now wearing the World Champion jersey, Bennett’s team-mate at Deceuninck-QuickStep is back to try again, the French rider winning in 2019, only Alaphilippe and Van Aert both still find themselves behind pre-race favourite Mathieu van der Poel, the 26-year-old Dutch rider who in recent weeks has been hitting some previously unheard of marks for weight, watts and power output that seemingly define this new era of pro cycling.
Two weeks ago, the day before Bennett won the opening stage of Paris-Nice, Van der Poel produced an estimated 1,362 watts of power on the final climb up the Via Santa Caterina to win Strade Bianche (a watt being a watt, whether on a bike or in the light bulb of your sitting room).
Van der Poel does have his limits though, sitting back it seemed to watch 2020 Tour de France winner Tadej Pogacar breaking another sort of weight, watts and power output record to win Stage 4 of the Tirreno-Adriatico last Saturday, his final climb up the Prati di Tivo over two minutes faster than the previous best of Chris Froome, set in 2013.
Bennett knows his limits too, especially on the hills, twice riding close to a standstill on the last mountain stages of Paris-Nice, clearly with the Poggio in mind. With four stage wins already this year (two in Paris-Nice, two in the UAE Tour), he is the favourite among the sprinters, should it come down to the bunch finish, the 30-year-old making no secret of the fact that after winning on the Champs Élysées, winning Milan-San Remo is now only second to winning the World Championship.
No rider in the current peloton has won it more than once, and, as Bennett may have noticed on the short drive from his home in Monaco towards San Remo, there is due to be a tailwind come race day, which will favour the attackers and not the sprinters.
“Just judging off myself and the numbers, I think I’m in a good place, but it’s just about having the legs on the day as well,” Bennett said on Thursday.
A reminder perhaps that weight, watts and power output can only take you so far in this new era for pro cycling, as long as you’re not up to anything else.
