Il Lombardia 2014

The road

At the start

A new finish in Bergamo

The Race of the Falling Leaves has been redrawn again: after years of finishing in Lecco, it runs 257 kilometres from Como over the Madonna del Ghisallo and the Passo di Ganda to the cobbled ramps of Bergamo Alta, three kilometres from the line. Joaquim Rodríguez defends the title. Valverde, Gilbert and Dan Martin — whose spring ended on the last corner in Liège — come for the year's last Monument.

How it was won

1. 180 km to go

   Four minutes, and no flat road left

   Eighty kilometres to go and barely a metre of level tarmac between the break and Bergamo. The gap is down to four minutes, and everything from here is either climbing or falling.

2. 264 km to go

   Passo di Ganda snaps the elastic

   The hardest climb of the day, steepest at the top, and the morning break simply comes apart on it. When the peloton arrives a few minutes later the same thing happens there — Philip Deignan among those darting away as the field is whittled down.

3. 327 km to go

   Weening forces it on the Berbenno

   A counter-move of Weening, Mollema, Hermans, Roy, Txurruka, Chaves and Chérel has linked up 1:50 down. As the gradient bites, Weening rides everyone off his wheel except Ben Hermans, and the pair tip over the top with thirteen slender seconds.

4. 418 km to go

   The race eats its own

   König throws himself off the front on the descent, then cramps and is gone. The world champion Kwiatkowski is distanced too. Hesjedal buries himself with one enormous turn on the front, and the survivors sweep towards Bergamo with everything still to play for.

5. 53 km to go

   Cobbles into the citadel

   The narrow ramps through the medieval gates of Bergamo Alta after 250km of climbing. Hermans and Weening are swallowed on the lower slopes just as Wellens powers clear; Gilbert is the only man who can go after him, and Contador is eliminated out the back.

6. 62 km to go

   A stellar group off the descent

   On the wide hairpins down from the citadel the race resolves into one dangerous group: Samuel Sánchez driving for Gilbert, with Valverde, Rui Costa, Aru, Albasini and defending champion Rodríguez. Dan Martin bridges across the gap and ghosts quietly to the back of it.

7. 7At the line

   Martin times it perfectly

   Sánchez eases for a heartbeat to check where Gilbert is. That hesitation is all the Irishman needs: inside the final kilometre Dan Martin kicks off the back of the group and holds it to the line, ahead of Valverde and Rui Costa — redemption after crashing out of Liège on the last corner in April.

The result