Regardless of everything going on in Ukraine, I have to give a quick recap of Saturday and the first of the five biggest one-day classics—the most prestigious ones, to be exact: Milan-San Remo-->
La Classicissima di primaveraSo, this is how Matej Mohorič pulled it off and won the race... it’s already become legendary, I guess. At the start, almost all the favorites were there—Wout van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel (who just finished training in Spain, his first race of the year), Tadej Pogacar, Primož Roglič, Peter Sagan, a bunch of Italians and Frenchmen, etc.
The race is nearly 186 miles long, and before the descent into San Remo, there are two nasty climbs: Cipressa and Poggio. The descent to the finish is about 5-3.7 miles. On the final summit, Mohorič was in the lead group of favorites that broke away, and then—well, he just left them in the dust with that insane descent..
Pay attention to two details: how he cleared the curb with a bunny hop and just how fast he was going... and how his wheel slipped ten seconds later, nearly sending him straight into the guardrail on a hairpin turn. Apparently, Sagan said he wasn't willing to take those kinds of risks just for a win (and Sagan is one of the best technicians in the peloton). Also, word is Mohorič told Pogacar before the race not to try following him down if they hit the last climb together. So, he had it all planned out, I suppose. The proof is that he used a dropper seatpost—he basically caught the UCI off guard since they don't even have a specific rule about whether you can use them in races or not.. That's why after the race he said, 'I've destroyed cycling - again.' (Because of his 'super-tuck' position which he practically invented and brought to the peloton, the UCI actually changed the rules once to ban it for safety reasons... idiots). We still don't know what happens with the dropper post. I'm happy for him, though; he had a bit of a rough patch before those wins at the Tour de France last year..