Il Lombardia 2012

The road

At the start

The Muro di Sormano is back

Bergamo, the last Monument of the season, and a route carrying two things that were not in it before: the Valico di Valcava, nine and a half kilometres at nine per cent inside the first hundred, and the Muro di Sormano, restored to the race after decades away. Philippe Gilbert rides Lombardia in the rainbow jersey for the first time. Alberto Contador arrives off the Vuelta and Milano-Torino as the favourite.

How it was won

1. 1131 km to go

   Eleven up the road, and rain everywhere

   Eleven riders are clear and the weather has taken over the race. Heavy downpours are turning every descent between Bergamo and Lecco into a lottery, and the peloton is riding the flat kilometres with one eye on the sky.

2. 283 km to go

   Rodriguez and Contador on the Sormano

   The Colma di Sormano is the first real test inside the final hundred kilometres and it is used as one: Rodríguez and Contador take turns tearing the front group apart on it, Romain Bardet goes clear over the top with twenty-five seconds, and Alberto Losada, who followed him, sits up at the summit to wait for his leader.

3. 379 km to go

   The rainbow jersey goes down

   The descent off the Sormano in the wet does what everybody feared. Gilbert, Ballan and Paolini all hit the road, and the world champion — six days into owning that jersey — gets up, looks at his bike, and climbs into the BMC car.

4. 446 km to go

   De Weert goes on the Ghisallo

   Losada has turned from Bardet's companion into his hunter and drives the bunch onto the lower slopes of the Madonna del Ghisallo. Hesjedal's counter fizzles, and with under fifty kilometres left Kevin De Weert rides clear, catches Bardet and ends a very brave French afternoon.

5. 525 km to go

   Nibali down, Rui Costa away

   Nibali, Tiralongo and Ten Dam all crash and all fight their way back on — and they arrive just as Rui Costa attacks with a shade over twenty-five kilometres left. Losada finally runs out of road; Sky and Lampre take over the chase with one climb to come.

6. 69 km to go

   Fifteen per cent at Villa Vergano

   Rui Costa is brought back at the foot of the last climb of the day and Katusha immediately go again — Alexandr Kolobnev to the front, hard, on a road that hits fifteen per cent in the rain, and then Joaquim Rodríguez off his wheel. It is the same acceleration he has used all season and once again nobody in the race can hold it: not Sánchez, not Urán, not Nibali. He goes over the top alone with a Monument nine kilometres away.

7. 7At the line

   Alone in Lecco

   A wet, technical descent and a flat run into Lecco with a chase group full of very good bike riders behind him, and Rodríguez holds every second of it. Samuel Sánchez takes second, Rigoberto Urán third — and the little Catalan becomes the first Spaniard ever to win the Giro di Lombardia.

The result