It’s difficult to encapsulate the emotions of Milan-San Remo just a few hours after the race. We witnessed one of the best-ever editions of La Primavera, and so one of the best one-day Classics ever. There is still so much to take in, so much to understand, and so much to savour.
Emotions are complex, very human, and so difficult to put into words, just like this year’s Milan-San Remo. What happened during the six and a half hours of racing, and especially in the electrifying final half hour? How did Tadej Pogačar get up from his crash, chase back on, attack on the Cipressa and Poggio and then beat Tom Pidcock in the sprint?
I stayed awake until 2:00 am after the race on Saturday night, watching replays, thinking back to what I witnessed beyond the finish line chaos on the Via Roma, what riders told me and especially what Tadej Pogačar said post-race.
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“Captain, they’ve only raced Strade Bianche and Milan-San Remo, all the cobbled Classics are still to come…”
Pogačar’s crash and comeback
As Alex Roos of L’Equipe wrote in Sunday’s French sports paper, which had the Tadej Pogačar and Tom Pidcock Via Roma sprint on the front page: “There is nothing more beautiful than what is imperfect, what goes awry, the unexpected, and Tadej Pogačar won the greatest challenge of his career on Saturday after a completely chaotic scenario.
“He demonstrated that no matter how much cycling modernises, no matter how much it bombards us with its watts and kilojoules, it will never be anything without instinct, without that extra something.”
That chaos, the unexpected, the way Pogačar, the usual dominant force in cycling, came back from adversity to win Milan-San Remo, is what made it a race for the ages.
Pogačar was close to climbing off or rolling into San Remo along the coast road after his…
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