Reuniting his battles with the greatest Classic experts in Milano-Sanremo, Mathieu Van der Poel aims to be the first reigning UCI Road World Champion to win the Italian Monument since Giuseppe Saronni in 1983.
“Milano-Sanremo is the easiest Monument to ride but the most difficult to win.”
As the cycling spring gets in full swing, Mathieu Van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) returns to the road races where he’s left his mark with his results as well as his post-race analysis. “You don’t always win if you’re the strongest, so that makes it really special to win,” he expanded a year ago about ‘La Primavera’, having claimed victory in Sanremo following a one-man-show up and down the Poggio.
Already a conqueror of the Ronde van Vlaanderen – Tour des Flandres (2020, 2022), the ‘Dutchman went on to win another Monument, Paris-Roubaix, and claimed the rainbow stripes on the road, at the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships in Glasgow, along with his many cyclo-cross conquests, including his sixth Elite UCI Cyclo-cross World Champion title to start 2024.
But as he begins his road season with Milano-Sanremo 2024 (the 115th edition of the Italian Monument), MVDP faces a new challenge: to keep racking up victories while wearing the rainbow jersey, an iconic image that hasn’t been witnessed in Sanremo since Giuseppe Saronni won in 1983.
The rainbow rarely shines in Sanremo
When looking for historic performances, Alfredo Binda is often a leading light to turn to. Among his many many conquests, the Italian icon was the first UCI World Champion, in 1927. He claimed the rainbow jersey again in 1930 and 1932… And he also won Milano-Sanremo twice, including the 1931 edition, with the UCI World Champion jersey on his shoulders.
Since then, triumphing in Sanremo with the rainbow jersey has been a rare feat, only achieved by true legends of the sport: Eddy Merckx (in 1972 and 1975), Felice Gimondi (1974) and Giuseppe Saronni (1983).
Decades before he noticed the talent of a very young Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates), Saronni was a wonderkid himself, winner of the Giro d’Italia at 21 years old (1979). He was yet to turn 25 when he powered to the rainbow jersey in Goodwood, England (United Kingdom). But Milano-Sanremo had already frustrated him more than once - he came 2nd in 1978, 1979 and 1980. The Italian Monument may be easy to ride (at least according to Van der Poel), but it’s a hard one to conquer.
With his rainbow jersey, Saronni was magnificent. As a UCI World Champion, he’d already won Il Lombardia in October. And he was determined to make La Primavera his. “I didn’t want any more 2nd places, and a podium result even less,” he later said. “Victory or nothing, make it or break it.” On the Poggio, he flew, to eventually make it. “My ‘strike’ in Goodwood is talked about a lot but the one in Sanremo was maybe even better.”
Freire, Alaphilippe, Sagan: missed rendezvous
After Saronni’s conquest, Sanremo became a sprinters’ paradise, until the balance shifted towards the puncheurs again in the last decade. Many UCI World Champions tried to tame the “Capi” and the nerve-racking finale of the first Monument of the year.
Germany’s Erik Zabel won four times in Sanremo (1997, 1998, 2000, 2001) but the rainbow jersey always escaped him (2nd in 2004 and 2006, 3rd in 2002). His rival Oscar Freire is a triple Elite winner of the road race at the UCI World Championships (1999, 2001, 2004) and of Milano-Sanremo (2004, 2007, 2010), but the rainbow and La Primavera never aligned for the Spaniard: the closest he came to winning in Sanremo as the reigning UCI World Champion was in 2000, with 3rd place.
More recently, Poland’s Michał Kwiatkowski won Milano-Sanremo (2017) three years after he conquered the UCI Worlds (2014), while Frenchman Julian Alaphilippe went the other way around (winner in Sanremo in 2019, before his two UCI World Champion titles in 2020 and 2021). As for Peter Sagan (SVK), he made the rainbow jersey his (UCI World Champion in (2015, 2016 and 2017) but victory in Sanremo escaped him, recording seven top-five placings.
Often frustrated by ‘La Primavera’, Sagan came to suggest the route should be made more difficult, to give the strongest riders more chance to make the difference. But this unpredictable balance is exactly what makes Milano-Sanremo “the hardest Monument to win”. And a most exciting one.