This is probably my favourite race of the year. Paris – Roubaix is a close runner up but the beautiful scenery and the finish in Siena slightly outdoes Flanders and a finish in a velodrome. I love the Lombardian images and the ride through Siena. I am not sure what the various sections are about but if you win the race three times you have one named after you. Fabian Cancellera is the only triple winner so far but Pogacar has a great chance in 2025 after his second success in 2024.

Race conditions were good for the viewer at least, if not the riders. Light rain had been forecast but it turned into a level of biblical magnitude. The riders, some of whom were in SS jerseys must have been frozen.  Combine that with a big peloton and some very sharp turns, one that I saw that was  almost 180 degrees, and there was a recipe for accidents to happen. Nothing too serious though.

The race was boring. Yes, there was a great breakaway from Tadel Pogacar with 81km to go but there was no chase. Once he had a 3 minute gap everyone just gave up. Pidcock tried to retain the title with a battling solo performance for fourth but neither him nor anyone else was going to catch the leader.

So which races form the Monuments and why do they do so? Directly from Wikipedia:-

The Monuments are five classic cycle races generally considered to be the oldest, hardest, longest and most prestigious one-day events in men’s road cycling, with distances between 240 and 300 km.

Milan – San Remo, Tour of Flanders, Paris – Roubaix, Liege – Bastogne – Liege and The Giro de Lombardia.

Strade Bianche is a new race by comparison, started in 2007 and over a distance of 184km which is much shorter than the monuments. So really there is no good reason to include it as a monument. However the Lantern Rouge podcast did, tongue in cheek, suggest that whichever race Tadel turns up at then it automatically becomes a monument race.

William Fotheringham, the doyen of cycling writing, also argues that it shouldn’t be a monument but instead a new group of ‘dirt epics’ including Strade Bianche and Ghent-Wevelgem should be formed. I suppose some will call them gravel races but those, IMHO, are rides that are predominantly off-road, not just having sections of rough stuff.

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