You almost thought you could hear the sounds of Ennio Morricone, the great Italian film composer who scored the images of the classic western "Play me the song of death", accompanying the scenes on the screen. Three daredevils spread out on the main street of a small town to finally settle things. This is what it looked like when Tadej Pogačar, Filippo Ganna and Mathieu van der Poel fanned out into a triangular formation on the final metres to the showdown on the Via Roma in San Remo. Not with taut colts, but with taut leg muscles.

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After 289 kilometres of cycling, nothing was decided at the 116th edition of Milan-San Remo. At the 300-metre mark, van der Poel took the start and the two chasers only managed to slipstream him. "I wanted to surprise them," emphasised the Dutchman. A successful surprise, you could say - you usually see the decisive attacks around 200 metres before the finish line. The winner of the first spring classic in 2025 has prepared for this scenario. "I've never trained as hard as I did last winter," emphasised the son of Adrie van der Poel and grandson of Raymond Poulidor. Unusually long sprints were also part of his programme; the 30-year-old cycling star is not resting on the gift of good genes, he is still doing everything he can for big victories. For the third time in a row, his Alpecin-Deceuninck team was successful at "La Classicissima". Two years ago it was van der Poel himself, last year he prepared the sprint for his Belgian team-mate Jasper Philipsen. Last year's winner, handicapped by a racing accident in the days leading up to Milan-San Remo, was out of the race early, left behind at the foot of the Cipressa, like many other sprinters.

"I tried everything," Tadej Pogačar could rightly claim, although, as in the previous year, he only managed third place on the Via Roma. Before that, there had been cycling from times long past. The finale was an archaic man-to-man battle, with open sights, a duel between the two best in the peloton. The rest of the peloton was relegated to the role of preparatory assistants or observers with binoculars. After third place for Pogačar in the previous year, UAE Team Emirates-XRG had once again tweaked the race strategy. The attempt in 2024 to join forces on the Cipressa to weed out as many opponents as possible had failed at the time - the helpers ran out of breath too early and the pace had to be slowed down.

The boss leads the way

This time, the boss wanted to take matters into his own hands earlier - after a short but perfect preparation for his attack: Belgian Tim Wellens had piloted the peloton into the Cipressa like a sprint rider, his newly signed team-mate Jhonatan Narvaez took over and accelerated one last time early on. Pogačar then sprinted towards an imaginary finish line as if on the flat. However, there were still more than 20 kilometres to go. The move was successful - at the top, at the narrow passage at the church, at the apex of the penultimate climb, the two currently best classics specialists were among themselves, the first chasing peloton clearly distanced. Only the two-time time trial world champion Filippo Ganna, who had fought valiantly, worked his way back up at a steady pace, but Pogačar vehemently left the saddle again at the foot of the final climb to Poggio. "Those two guys cost me years of my life," said the exhausted, coughing, bearded Ganna later. One kilometre before the finish, he had caught the leaders - and finally sprinted to second place. "I'm happy, I did the maximum," he summarised.

Mathieu van der Poel, on the other hand, knew that with every step he took to follow his great rival, he was getting closer to his second victory at the "Primavera". His trump cards: sprinting speed and psychological momentum, as Tadej Pogačar had to desperately try to shake off his presumably superior opponent on the home straight. "He knew that he could stay on my rear wheel while I had to attack," explained Pogačar. After all, the man in the rainbow jersey managed to parry a counterattack just below the summit of the Poggio di San Remo - the Dutchman was at eye level, he and Pogačar improved the records for the climbs on Cipressa and Poggio together.

"This race is going to put me in my grave," said "Pogi" before the start. As if he had realised that he would come away empty-handed again. "Everyone - not just me, the whole team - did everything. We do better every year. We show more aggression, more willpower on the Cipressa. I wanted to finish it - but in the end there were simply two guys faster than me," said the world champion, summarising the race day. He found his champion in Mathieu van der Poel - who doesn't come from physicality alone, but plays his trump cards in the races with great concentration. After all, the Dutch winner of seven Monuments (three times Tour of Flanders, twice each Paris-Roubaix and Milan-San Remo) promised that he did not want to go trophy hunting in the "protected area" of the Tour specialists. He would have to lose weight in order to be in contention for victory in Liège-Bastogne-Liège or the Tour of Lombardy against Pogačar, he said. "I'm sticking with these races," he emphasised after the victory. He knows what he can do. And what he can't do.