Milan-San Remo 2017

The road

At the start

Sagan can win this three different ways

Milan, and the 108th Primavera is the longest race of the year — 291 kilometres that only begin to matter in the last thirty. Peter Sagan is the favourite everyone names: he can take this off the Poggio, off the descent or in a sprint, which is its own problem. Démare defends, Gaviria beat him in a Tirreno sprint this week, and Tom Boonen rides his last San Remo. Sky came for Viviani, with Kwiatkowski to mind him.

How it was won

1. 1286 km to go

   Ten gone before Milan is out of sight

   The flag drops on the 108th Primavera and the day's move is settled inside five kilometres: Skujins and Clarke, Denz, Rovny, Maestri, Poli, Marangoni, Frapporti, Amezqueta and Zurlo, ten riders with 286 kilometres in front of them. Nobody objects, and by the fifty-kilometre mark they have nearly five minutes.

2. 2150 km to go

   Over the Turchino, and the leash tightens

   The only climb between the Po plain and the sea, twenty-five kilometres at barely one and a half per cent, and the ten come over it with the bunch suddenly close behind: two minutes fifteen on the far side. It is far too early to be that close — anybody could bridge from there — so the peloton eases and lets the gap breathe out again.

3. 339 km to go

   The capi break the break

   Mele, Cervo, Berta — three short headlands inside the last fifty kilometres, and they do the damage. Alexis Gougeard has already gone clear alone and found himself stranded in no man's land, a minute short of the leaders and seconds in front of the bunch. Ahead of him the ten come apart: Poli, at twenty the youngest rider in the race, is the first to let go, then Frapporti and Zurlo.

4. 422 km to go

   The Cipressa finishes the ten

   Three seconds is all the escape has left at the foot of the climb above Santo Stefano. Ivan Rovny throws one more dig at it and is swallowed with twenty-six kilometres to go, after two hundred and sixty-five spent on the front. Higher up Tim Wellens counters with Mattia Cattaneo for company, but Tom Dumoulin is riding tempo at the head of the bunch and nothing is allowed to live.

5. 515 km to go

   Gallopin and Gilbert on the flat

   Off the descent and onto the last flat road before the Poggio, Tony Gallopin jumps with Philippe Gilbert on his wheel, and ten riders open a gap that would end the day for every sprinter here. Bora-hansgrohe have to spend themselves closing it — and then stay on the front, which is not how Sagan wanted to arrive at the last climb.

6. 66 km to go

   Sagan kicks on the Poggio

   Sky lead onto the climb, Dumoulin drags the front of the race up it and pulls off with six and a half kilometres left, and on the steepest ramp near the top the world champion goes. Two men in San Remo can answer him: Michal Kwiatkowski and Julian Alaphilippe come across just as the road tips over the summit. Sagan wanted to be alone. He has company instead.

7. 7At the line

   Kwiatkowski comes past on the line

   Sagan attacks the descent like a man still trying to finish this alone and very nearly does — sixteen seconds at the bottom with two and a half kilometres left, the trio clear and Kristoff leading a bunch that will not quite get there. So the world champion drives the flat himself, leads under the kite, looks back once, and opens the sprint with four hundred metres to go. Kwiatkowski, who has taken perhaps a third of the work since the Poggio, sits and waits and comes off the wheel in the last few metres. They study the photo finish; it changes nothing.

The result