Second victory in the “Primavera” for Mathieu van der Poel, after that of 2023. The Dutchman won, Saturday March 22, Milan-Sanremo, the first cycling Monument of the season, ahead of the Italian Filippo Ganna and a very offensive Tadej Pogacar, at the end of a thrilling race.
Mathieu van der Poel resisted several attacks from Tadej Pogacar. The Slovenian tried everything to win it, but in vain, even losing second place to an admirably resilient Ganna.
Pogacar’s conundrum
To solve the enigma posed by the Italian classic, Pogacar went all in and took all the risks by blowing up the race from the Cipressa, the penultimate climb, around 25 kilometers from the finish.
Behind two big stints from his teammates, Tim Wellens and Jhonatan Narvaez, he attacked several times to shake up the peloton in all directions and put all the favorites to torture.
Only two men managed to follow him, Mathieu van der Poel and Filippo Ganna, while the young Frenchman Romain Grégoire was able to hang on for a few hundred meters.
The Pogacar-Van der Poel-Ganna trio widened their advantage in the flat section leading up to the Poggio, the final bump, where Pogacar accelerated again three times. But the Van der Poel plaster remained stuck in his wheel and even tried to counter the Slovenian.
Ganna, who had stalled slightly, came back on the two men after the descent, 800 meters from the Via Roma finish. The three men then competed for victory in the sprint and it was Van der Poel, the fastest of the three, who logically won.
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By winning his seventh Monument, the 30-year-old Dutchman returns to the level of Pogacar in the list of the five greatest classics on the calendar.
And sends the Slovenian back to the question that has been tormenting him for years: how to finally win this classic which resists him so much?
Among the women, European champion Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) won ahead of her Dutch compatriot Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike), while Swiss Noemi Ruegg (EF Education-Oatly) completed the podium.
With AFP
