Milan-San Remo 2025 Race Preview 🇮🇹 🚴♂️
A preview of the upcoming 116th edition of La Classicissima, as Tadej Pogačar, Mathieu van der Poel, and Mads Pedersen headline a star-studded field
Hi Subscribers,
We’re kicking off today with THE essential Milan-San Remo men’s race preview, written by Joe Morgan. If you’re not familiar with Joe, I highly recommend checking out his work on Substack. He provides the most detailed race previews available, and it’s wonderful to welcome him back onto this Substack.
Also, last night I interviewed legendary photographer Graham Watson. He sent me around 30 of his favourite cycling images and I had the task of trying to cut them down to 10 ahead of our interview. I failed (they were all too good) and I couldn’t get the number to below 12, but the images I chose were incredible.
Founding Members of my Substack will have woken up to the complete gallery in their WhatsApp group this morning, along with the audio interview with Graham in which he talks about each image and the stories behind the photos. To gain access to the images, the audio interview, and support this Substack, simply click on the link below to become a Founding Member. The written article/gallery will run at a later date. And, finally, a massive thank you to Graham for his time.
Have a great day.
Daniel 🫶
Milan-San Remo 2025 Race Preview 🇮🇹 🚴♂️
Race History
The 116th edition of Milan-San Remo takes place on Saturday, 22 March 2025.
Known as “La Classicissima” or “La Primavera”, Milan-San Remo marks one of the first opportunities in Spring for riders to etch themselves into the history of one of cycling’s most iconic races. It’s the first Monument of the season and the longest professional one-day race in modern cycling. The race has a tradition of being held on the third Saturday of March and the first edition was back in 1907.
Of all the classics, Milan-San Remo is described as the easiest to ride, but the hardest to win. This is because the majority of the race is pan-flat, but the finale up and down the Poggio di Sanremo is so finely balanced that it allows all different types of riders to shine. That’s what makes the final 10 kilometres of Milan-San Remo arguably the most exhilarating of the entire season.
The discourse of Milan-San Remo has changed invariably over the years. In its early years, Milan-San Remo was a mammoth expedition of a race with some huge winning margins and solo attacks. Costante Girardengo finished on the podium in 11 editions of the race and won it 6 times between 1917 and 1928, setting a record for the most podium finishes. Italian icons such as Alfredo Binda, Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali all won multiple editions during the 30s to 50s, forever cementing their legacies as legends of the sport.
Throughout the 50s to the mid-90s, there were a variety of Grand Tours and Classics specialists claiming the honours at La Classicissima. Alongside Eddy Merckx who won the race a record seven times, many legendary riders added their names to the roll of honour in this period including; Rik Van Looy (1958), Raymond Poulidour (1961), Tom Simpson (1964), Roger De Vlaeminck (1973, 1978-1979), Felice Gimondi (1974), Francesco Moser (1984), Sean Kelly (1986, 1992), and Laurent Fignon (1988-1989) among many other icons of cycling.
1997 saw a seismic shift in Milan-San Remo when German sprint legend Erik Zabel won the race for the first time in his career. He would win three of the next four editions, and from this point onwards, the race would be dominated by the sprinters for the next 20 years. As mentioned, Erik Zabel (1997-1998, 2000-2001) won four editions, whilst Óscar Freire (2004, 2007, 2010) won three, and the likes of Mario Cipollini (2002), Alessandro Petacchi (2005), and Mark Cavendish (2009) all became victorious too.
We saw another turn in the 2017 race won by Michał Kwiatkowski. It was an epic edition where the former world champion lit up the race alongside the current world champion at the time, Peter Sagan, and a fresh-faced Julian Alaphilippe. Kwiatkowski won the race after an epic photo finish with Peter Sagan, but significantly, it marked a change in the race’s modern history.
Since then, we haven’t seen a bunch sprint contest the victory at Milan-San Remo, with the attackers becoming the dominant force in the race. The race has been won via solo attack or a reduced group sprint in the last eight editions of Milan-San Remo. Vincenzo Nibali’s stunning solo performance in 2018 followed before thrilling wins for Julian Alaphilippe and Wout van Aert. Jasper Stuyven and Matej Mohorič upset the favourites in 2021 and 2022, with the latter producing one of the most daring descent performances on the Poggio that the race has seen since Sean Kelly back in 1992. If you have never seen the 1992 edition of Milan-San Remo, it is seriously worth checking out on YouTube.
Mathieu van der Poel delivered a thermonuclear attack on the Poggio in 2023, soloing to the win, before playing a crucial part in his teammate Jasper Philipsen’s victory last year. Ironically, Philipsen, being a sprinter, bucks the recent trend in some sense of Milan-San Remo no longer being the sprinter’s classic, but we have seen that the Belgian is much more than a pure sprinter, and he won the race last year from a reduced group too.
Race Statistics
Most Wins - 7 times by Eddy Merckx 🇧🇪 (1966-67, 1969, 1971-1972, 1975-1976)
Considered as the easiest monument to ride, but the hardest to win, it’s staggering to think that Eddy Merckx won Milan-San Remo seven times in his simply outrageous career.
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