Il Lombardia 2011

The road

At the start

The last Lombardia in October

The Race of the Falling Leaves closes the season for the last time: from next year it moves to September and the Tour of Beijing takes the final word. Philippe Gilbert can end a season of victories by joining Coppi and Binda as the only men to win three Lombardias in a row, and the new climb at Villa Vergano, short and savage and nine kilometres out, looks built for him. Milan to Lecco, 241 kilometres.

How it was won

1. 1221 km to go

   Six out of Milan

   An eleven o'clock start, and Corioni, Van Summeren, Pasqualon, Arashiro, Astarloza and Bertazzo go up the road on a course billed as the hardest Lombardia in years. Their lead climbs past eight minutes before anybody behind them takes an interest.

2. 2161 km to go

   The Valcava sorts nothing out

   The feared climb to 1,336 metres cuts the six's advantage to under two minutes by the summit — and then, on the long run north afterwards, the peloton hands it all back and more, six minutes again by kilometre 108.

3. 382 km to go

   Liquigas take the Sormano

   Under Liquigas's impulse the gap is down to less than two minutes at the foot of the Colma di Sormano with a hundred kilometres left, and by the bottom of the descent the escape has ceased to exist. Gilbert tries a few tentative accelerations to see who is paying attention.

4. 446 km to go

   Nibali's beautiful mistake

   He went as the leaders took drinks in Bellagio, and Gilbert, Fuglsang, Paolini and Santambrogio could hold him for a moment before deciding not to. Over the Ghisallo, past the chapel and the tifosi, Vincenzo Nibali has nearly two minutes and fifty-five kilometres left. Italy has had a miserable season and for half an hour it lets itself believe.

5. 514 km to go

   Sky put an end to it

   Rogers and Cummings drive the chase across sixteen kilometres of flat road at close to thirty an hour, hand over to Löfkvist, and reel Nibali in just before the first ramps of Villa Vergano. The illusion lasted exactly thirty kilometres.

6. 69 km to go

   The Muro dell'Alpino

   A kilometre of road at fifteen percent, nine from Lecco, and the whole season narrows onto it. Philippe Gilbert, the world's number one rider, going for a third straight Lombardia, looks laboured and then simply stops going — twenty seconds lost in less than a kilometre. And out of a group full of the best climbers in the world it is Oliver Zaugg who rides away from all of them.

7. 7At the line

   Lecco

   He is faultless on the descent and comes into Lecco fifteen seconds clear, a 30-year-old Swiss domestique who has never won a Classic, never won a stage race, never won a professional bike race of any kind. Behind him Dan Martin pips Joaquim Rodriguez for second, and the last day of the season belongs to a man nobody had a plan for.

The result